Vengeance War 'till Death

Bestial Warlust wasn't exactly a band I would have seen myself actively pursuing had it not been for my active desire to get into the often misunderstood genre of "war metal".

If anything, the album cover alone should have persuaded me not to try it. I know the phrase "don't judge a book by its cover" is an absolutely valid one and one I advocate for, but the way this album cover looks just makes my eyes uncomfortable. So much harsh contrast making things hard to look at, as well as the oddly-campy in-your-face-ness of the title and track listing... then it hit me. Maybe all this imagery is indicative of the material inside, as per black metal tradition. The music itself should be raw and abrasive, a full force of high-octane noise fueled by spite. That line of thinking re-kindled some form of excitement for this listen. It was either going to be hyper-aggressive black metal, or hyper-aggressive noise music, and I was most likely going to like it either way.

Well I can definitely say it is not just noise and there indeed exists musical value to this album. There are riffs and atmosphere well-established within each song, even if the production makes Transilvanian Hunger sound like Dimmu Borgir. I would even venture to argue that atmosphere takes precedence over any other element here, since it's fairly clear from the direction of the songwriting and the sheer tempo of the music that this album was made with one mood and only one mood: Evil, and that's what I like about Vengeance War 'till Death.

If the Norwegian scene under Euronymous was about making the most "evil" image possible to support the music, then Bestial Warlust is what happens when a band redirects that evil straight into the music instead. This album sounds evil. It sounds actually like the "black metal" people think of when they haven't heard much black metal before, even if this isn't purely black metal to begin with. It hits fast, it's as abrasive as 40-grit sandpaper on your ears and it is unapologetic about what it is. It sounds chaotic and messy and that's what I like about it.

What I DON'T like about it is actually the same topic to an extent. The fact that the well-crafted evil atmosphere takes precedence over all other musical aspects is not a boon to the album. After realizing that the most I could get from this was "wow, these guys play fast and viciously, this isounds chaotic", I lowered my expectations for what else could be on here after the first two songs. And therefore I wasn't disappointed. The fast-picked, distorted-to-the-point-of-shoegaze guitars slide and bend every few notes on every track, giving an unstable, almost twisted sound, the solos are brief yet sound like some kind of Kerry King-esque noodling whenever they do happen, the drums maintain a steady blast-beat with a few breaks here and there and the vocals are unextraordinary in their raspy, cackling delivery.

The production as I mentioned before is no help either. Call it more "kvlt" for sounding like crap if you want, but this album desperately needs a remix. It does NOT need to be squeaky clean, but even if it sounded like a generic late-80's/early 90's death metal album, it would sound far better than the existing mix by far. You can still sound good and keep the evil tone without losing the "rawness" from a different mix job, virtually every other black and death band of the time had adequate to great mixing and kept their aesthetics on point, so there shouldn't be a reason to ignore terrible mixing here. It could always be worse, yes, but when the only stage I can think of below this is "raw black metal demo" then the bar is REALLY LOW.

To say anything specific about any of the individual songs here would be reaching for topics, as you can let this album play in its entirety and be unable to distinguish one song from another. My feelings on this album are mixed, but it's definitely one to hear for yourself. Vengeance War 'till Death is definitely not for the impatient metal listener, and it's not for people who value instrumentation and musicianship over imagery and aforementioned aesthetic.

Maybe in a year or two I'll look back on this release and think "wow this actually is amazing", but for right now I'm holding to the opinion that although the musical focus of this album isn't to my personal liking, it doesn't mean it's flawed. As it is, it will be memorable, if not for the reasons I wanted it to be.

Who would've guessed that one of the most intense bestial black metal bands would come from Australia? Based in Melbourne, Bestial Warlust would immediately jump into the black metal scene in 1994 with their debut album "Vengeance War 'till Death". While some may feel off with the abrasive sound of the record at first, the album does become fun once you get used to it. While "Blood & Valour" is considered the better album, I personally find their debut to be much better.

One great thing about the album is the instruments. Bestial Warlust knows how to create a chaotic atmosphere, and in the first track "Bestial Warlust", the listener is immediately thrown into madness. The guitars play some noisy and raging riffs, and they are excellent in bringing in an atmosphere of madness. The drums also beat in fast patterns, and they enhance the fast tempo of the other instruments. The bass is buried deep in the poor production, but when it shows up on rare occasions, you can hear it provide a good foundation for the track. While the track is noisy overall, the key to the instruments is atmosphere, and this track does it well. Other great instrumentals would be in tracks "Dweller of the Bottomless Pit", "Satanic", and "Storming Vengeance". The instruments are very chaotic, and the atmosphere they bring in is overall incredible.

Another great element of the track is the vocals. Damon Bloodstorm does the vocals here, and his voice is incredible. His vocals mainly consist of high pitch shrieks and growls, and they are mixed well. One great example of this would be in the track "Dweller of the Bottomless Pit". The shrieks and growls are mixed well and they give him a negative personality. His voice also flows well to the fast and rowdy instruments, and they even enhance the atmosphere at times. One minor issue I have with the vocals though is that the poor production sometimes drowns out the vocals, so they sound a bit muffled from the loud instruments. Otherwise, the vocals sound great.

The lyrics are also written well. Bestial black metal usually has lyrical themes of war and Satanism, but Bestial Warlust would take them to a whole new level. For example, in the track "Heathens", this verse quotes:

With her eyes open, her head is raised high
For all to see, celebrant drowned in red
He plunges his jaws, in neck of whore
Her swinging remains, are ripped from the tree

This verse describes a demon mutilating a woman. The descriptions of the murder are very graphic and brutal, and the lyrics have a uneven tone in them, so the reader feels uneasy reading it. Not only that, but the lyrics fit perfectly to the instruments, With the harsh sound of the instruments and the agonizing shrieks of Damon, the lyrics are given a more dark and creepy tone in them, and it works well, The lyrics are very descriptive, and they would be further executed from the instruments.

While this record may not be viewed as well as their next album, it still has plenty of excellent moments. The instrumentals are very rough and jarring, the vocals give the tone of the album a more scary sound, and the lyrics are very descriptive and poetic in wars and the devil. "Blood & Valour" may been seen as a better album, but there is still plenty of good to be seen with "Vengeance War 'till Death". I recommend this album to those who want a more noisy sound of bestial black metal.

Trying to get into new genres isn’t always easy. As a huge black metal fan, I’ve been aware of the existence of bestial black metal for some time, but never cared to check it out. I saw this album cover and found it intriguing so I thought I’d give this album a try and it ended up being just what I feared.

Every single song off this album is flat and a mess of noise. Each song is a noisy clump of riffs, blast beats, and growls, leaving no way to differentiate between songs. Most of the riffs are senselessly trem picked and have no melodic quality to them at all. As a matter of fact, this album has no melody at all. The occasional lead guitar is just random shreddy nonsense in an attempt to create more chaos rather than something musical. There is an occasional riff that is mid paced and can be described as musical, but never anything that grabs my attention.

The drums on this album are quite terrible. 95% of the drumming is the same monotone snare blast beat and their drummer is obviously not very rhythmically inclined. The bass on this album is completely worthless, playing nothing of musical value, at least not any more so than the other instruments.

The vocalist is quite possibly the only member of this band that brings anything enjoyable to the table. He does have a good evil sounding black/death growl, but unfortunately it is not accompanying worthwhile music.

Production is awful, songwriting is low effort, monotonous, and boring, instrumentation sucks, and the evil atmosphere they were going for isn’t captured at all. This album would be worthless if it weren’t for the cool album art which got me interested in this album to begin with. It’s gonna be a while before I try out bestial black metal again.

Aside from a few bands, Norway's black metal scene was and is utter shite which is something that the guys up north in Canada knew. Of course I'm speaking of the guys in Blasphemy who created the bestial masterpiece "Fallen Angel of Doom" which would spawn a slew of great bands (and a whole lot of craptacular bands as well) that emulated the band's more relentless black metal sound. Arguably the best band to follow Blasphemy and their vile sound would come from down under (Who would've thunk it?) in the form of Bestial Warlust, with the cheesy and hilarious stage names and everything. After releasing some demos under the moniker of Corpse Molestation, it was time to set fire to the extreme metal underground with their debut record "Vengeance War Till Death" which is quite possibly the greatest metal export from Australia and has easily one of the best album covers ever.

If you've heard "Fallen Angel of Doom" then you should know exactly what to expect on "Vengeance War Till Death," and the band wastes no time in letting the listener know what kind of filthy and spastic music is about to be unleashed as they open the album with the track "Bestial Warlust." A song that starts with some fast and random drumming accompanied by Bloodstorm's exclamation of "Bestial Warlust!" before erupting into an all-out assault upon the listener and their brain which is sure to be turned to mush once the record is over. The next song "Dweller of the Bottomless Pit" isn't much different than the first track and it almost reinforces that terrible stereotype that all war metal sounds exactly the same, but the next track "Satanic" is black metal in its finest form. This song is evil, heavy and entirely devastating as it starts off with some heavy powerchords accompanied by a tolling bell to further that dark and murky atmosphere.

One of the most common complaints that I've encountered when seeing discussions of this album is the drumming, which I immediately laugh at. The drumming here isn't extremely precise or even varied much, but there is no denying that the intensity from the kit throughout these seven songs from hell is such a vital part to the music. The riffs only come in two different varieties for the most part, they're either bursts of tremolo riffing like on the song "Storming Vengeance" which seems to be nothing but fast tremolo picking or they come in the heavier, midpaced variety, though they're not too slow thanks to Hellcunt's insane drumming. "Vengeance War Till Death" is definitely one of those records where you'll either love it or hate it as most of the tracks are similar in sound and leave pretty much the same impression. Whether or not that impression is a positive or negative one, doesn't matter because at the end of the day Bestial Warlust and their answer to Blasphemy with this album will continue to be one that is coveted by the metal underground for years to come.

Highlights
"Satanic"
"Heathens"
"Storming Vengeance"

Originally written for Nightmare Reality Webzine.
nightmarerealitywebzine.blogspot.com

Did you grow up a metalhead around a bunch of friends, family, lovers, and co-workers who didn't understand the genre of music you enjoyed? Were you constantly berated? Did your peers and parents ever ask you why you listened to that goddamn noise? Did people ever exclaim to you 'Music? That's not fucking music!' My friends, the band they were all referring to (specifically) was named Bestial Warlust, and they were a 5-man wrecking crew from Melbourne with handles like Damon Bloodstorm, Chris Corpsemolestor, Keith Destroyer, Joe Skullfucker, and my personal favorite, Markus Hellcunt. Up to this point, they had been dubbed Corpse Molestation and released a slew of demos, but Vengeance War Till Death was their debut album after the name change, and Gods what a fucking racket we had here.

Yes, Bestial Warlust would honour the negative stereotypes of their art and then go personally yank the spines out of every naysayer with their blasphemy, then rolling over their quivering, gelatinous corpses with a tank forged with the steel of Hell. If this sounds like a rousing recommendation for the album, well, it's not exactly. Musically, there is not much value aside from the ripping extremity, but to quote my favorite local gas station chain's slogan, 'It Kicks!' Vengeance War Till Death is a grinding, roiling mass of black metal hostility with barks and snarls and tinny start/stop drumming. The lyrics are absurd, like Venom taking a pair of shotguns and embarking on a pig hunt through the nine layers. If Paul Hogan took a bowie knife and then killed and skinned all humanity, before sitting down for a beer, and then the credits rolled, this would be playing over them.

The band's m.o. "Bestial Warlust" pours out of the speakers like the hellish cavalry that grace its cover art, a mass of flailing limbs that pick up guitars and grind the horrid fuck out of you as the drums play some pretty annoying, stop/start blasts and the guitars burst into shred leads and otherwise high velocity death metal rhythms. Bloodstorm almost sounds like the bully down the street invading your shitty grindcore band's practice and groaning on growling, but you are too afraid to say anything lest he kick your ass. "Dweller of the Bottomless Pit" begins and you ask yourself, 'haven't I just heard this song?' More or less, it strikes at the same relentless pace as the predecessor. Maybe the drums thunder a little. Maybe at 1:40 they bust out a pretty good death metal rhythm under some more of their shredding, which disappears into the thrusting mass. "Satanic" starts with some nice bells and doomy background rhythms, and then erupts into another charging, infernal rhythm, but for some reason I really enjoy the atmosphere created through this track. "Heathens" has another good old death rhythm, the bass menacing below with a pumping fervor, though it becomes repetitive before long.

'Dancing orgastically in a form of possession
Draped in robes drinking the juice of vein
The chalice lies upon the ceremonial stone
Unfortunate soul hooked from the uterus'

No, Bestial Warlust were not about to steal a literary award from Maya Angelou, but their vile, and often strange lyrics were a good match for their compositional tyranny. "Hammering Down the Law of the New Gods / Holocaust Wolves of the Apocalypse" is practically a poem unto its own song title, but the track itself is anything but beautiful, a slow crash and crawl that transforms into a more refined, driving force than most other pieces on the album. "Storming Vengeance" again breaks out all the stops to deliver a pretty firm ass splattering. It's like the band were slowly evolving through the album, writing better songs as they went, but throwing the entire process onto disc. Vengeance War Till Death ends with its most 'epic' length track, at six minutes, "At the Graveyard of God" opens with noisy, droning guitars and samples, then goes volcano with some shredding bewilderment and scathing, horrific black metal. Another of the better tracks.

What if Blood Duster and Mayhem were to form a Charles Manson cover band? Bestial Warlust would probably come over to their jamspace and kick their asses for sounding like pansies. This was a new elephant in the room for Australian metal...alright, not an elephant, but a behemoth, trampling everything in sight and setting a new standard for blasphemous extremity. I don't love the album, and I honestly don't even enjoy enough to listen without thoughts of harming myself. It's noisy and doesn't really develop any worthwhile riffing. It will piss off your neighbors, your friends, your girlfriend, your parents, even your pets. But taken in the right amounts, under the proper circumstances (I suggest speedballing and whiskey), it's damned funny.

Highlights: Fuck the lamb of God!!! Wow, they were even prophetic.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

When I first heard this album, nothing could prepare me for the absolute skullfucking I would receive upon hearing it. This is an Australian classic from the depths of hell, one of the most chaotic releases that you will ever hear in your life, but of course, chaotic in a good way. People have criticised the production (or lack of production) found on this release, and have even branded it “unlistenable” but I see no problem with it overall. I mean sure, its no Devin Townsend release, but it isn’t as horrible as some have said about it.

Bestial Warlust play ‘War Metal’ in a vein that isn’t too dissimilar to Blasphemy, but sounds much rawer and many of the instruments sound as if they blend together with vocals then growled over the top. Many of the members in this band would go on to participate in many other classic Australian acts such as Destroyer 666 and Gospel of the Horns, with the most notable member being KK Warlust from Destroyer 666. The production seems to get better as the album goes on, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the album itself gets better as it goes on.

The stand-out tracks from this album are definitely “Bestial Warlust” and “At the Graveyard of God”. “Bestial Warlust” starts out with what sounds like blast beats and then Damon Bloodstorm bellowing out “BESTIAL… WARLUUUUUUST”, with the awesome (but muddled) guitar work coming in after that. It is truly one of the best introductions to an album I have heard in a long time. The lyrics certainly aren’t the most intellectual or though provoking, but they are a war metal band singing about death, Satan and war, now come on, what did you really expect? The other stand out “At the Graveyard of God” starts off a bit slower with some weird chanting until it sounds almost like a badly produced Destroyer 666 song except the vocals seem a lot more distorted compared to the rest of the album and there are numerous speed changes as they go from blistering-break-your-neck speed to slower more interlude-like passages (no, not like Opeth, more like the guitars stop and the drums keep a beat going).

I would recommend this album to anyone looking for some of the most brutal, chaotic, war metal they can get their hands on and anyone that has any interest in any KK Warslut or Damon (Bloodstorm) Burr’s other bands. Because as mentioned before, this is some of the most intense music you will ever hear.

This is an extreme album, inevitably one that is going to divide reviewers into two distinct camps: those that worship it for the bestial, destructive black metal that it is and those that can't understand it as anything other than a wall of noise. While subscribers to the latter will try and rationalize this as Australia's response to Norsecore or in rare cases as a bad attempt at death metal, a more suitable comparison would be to Blasphemy and the likes of Beherit and Archgoat. It needs to be made clear straight away that this is a completely different strain of black metal to the typical Norwegian stuff.

If you're looking for melody, musical progression or accessibility then you'll be disappointed. Vengeance... uses Blasphemy-esque riffs with a greater emphasis on sounding evil and speeds it up a bit, a sense of chaos coming with that. It could be best explained as the exact mid-point between Blasphemy and Revenge.

The music is abrasive and requires an understanding of this style before one can really appreciate it. Many will write this off as obnoxious noise without realising that that is what Bestial Warlust set out to acheive anyway. If this is your first foray into this style of music, I'd recommend you jump back a few years to hear something less extreme like the bands mentioned in the first paragraph, or even forward to Abominator's Barbarian War Worship which is essentially a more catchy version of this.

Overall, it's a classic album that acheives everything it aimed for. Whether or not its intentions were to your liking is for you to decide, but there's no arguing that this band was more than able at what they did. If you don't like it, stay away from it. Remember the first time you heard death metal and it went straight over your head because it was so extreme? Bestial Warlust is like that. All over again.

Some former reviewers of this album have taken the position that it's too noisy, too indistinct and too rough. Yup, it sure is. I'm not sure of this whole "War Metal" category that some writers (Especially from British magazines) have been blabbing about, but I do understand the clear link between BESTIAL WARLUST and similar acts like BLASPHEMY, CONQUEROR, REVENGE, BLACK WITCHERY, and to a lesser degree ANGELCORPSE. I do understand That BESTIAL WARLUST had a total overkill sound that blurred out the details in their sound, which some listeners really don't care for. But it was released at a time when it seemed like every death metal band was using clean production and drum triggers to sound way too prefect and precise, and every Black metal band was writing wimpy odes to forests and elves. For me BESTIAL WARLUST was a blast back to the old sinister days of SODOM and POSSESSED with a modern black metal image and lyrical mayhem to go with it. "Vengeance War Til Death" became one of my favorite releases when it first came out, and it had re-visited my stereo many, many times since. Note: The band evolved out of Australians CORPSE MOLESTATION, and members of BESTIAL have gone on the DESTROYER 666 and the excellent GOSPEL OF THE HORNS. Also for Australian Black metal, please check out NAXZUL's amazing CD "Totem"." If you've heard about "Vengeance War" and love noisy, severe metal, please check it out. If OPETH is your favorite band you might want to skip it.

After reading the previous review, one might think it a safe bet to stay away from this release. I couldn’t agree more! That is unless you want your stereo to suffer complete nuclear meltdown! No one but the most extreme individual will find any common ground with this music. To the normal person it would sound like a wall of noise about to crash down on the listener in rage and fury.

This album has been around for quite some time now, and I have yet to find another, that even comes close to the destructive quality Vengeance War ‘till Death unleashes. Bands such as Conqueror and Black Witchery don’t even come close in songwriting or execution. And where those bands quickly grow stale, this does not. The more you listen, the more you understand.

The first four songs are akin to tearing down your living room walls with a STIHL Magnum 049 chainsaw. They gain momentum with crashing guitars that sound like mortars exploding, insane growling vocals that become so distorted with bloodlust they are completely indecipherable at times. The drums pound with barbaric ferocity, ready to slay anyone and anything in their path.

To me, this sits right up there with Incantation’s Upon the Throne of Apocalypse, or Blasphemy’s Fallen Angel of Doom. The main difference is the vocals are not as deep and the overall sound is slightly higher with many more guitar leads. There is a section on Dweller of the Bottomless Pit where, on a good stereo, the bottom drops right out from under you and the earth shakes. Insanity!

The only complaint I would have is the last half of the album loses its intensity a bit. But shit, how could you possibly make a song more perfectly chaotic and aggressive than the fore mentioned? This is metal! Pure Fucking Satanic War Metal! Play this CD as loud as you can, and watch your neighbors suffer apocalyptic death!!

This is among the worst things I've ever heard in my time as a banger, and that's a mighty long time on my end. This makes the typical norsecore/1-man band projects traditional in black metal sound worthy of praise, and that should tell you something, considering I don't go for that whole thing.

So let's sum it up: several Aussies with charming stage names like KK Warslut (who went on to the far better Destroyer 666) and Joe Skullfucker decide that they can do better than the Norwegians at creating amelodic white noise and set out to prove it. And they did, too, because this is pure noise at best.

The "production" is sheer garbage can ambience taken to an extreme and the "musicians" can't play at all. The drummer was the weakest link here with his stuttering, unsteady attempts at blast beats (even worse than Oscar Garcia's drummer in Nausea) and the riffs are so sloppy they merge into a wall of sound in the least complimentary sense of the term. Tightness seems to be an option best left out the equation here, too, as these guys are all over the map. Even the oldest Sodom records sound better than this! And the vocals are just plain hilarious they're so bad: you can tell he's trying his best to be as evil as he can and just sounds like he has laryngitis (I just got over that, so believe me, I know).

Nothing stands out on this, and I can safely say that it is among the most laughable attempts at metal music I've ever heard. Bin it and have done with it, and I'm glad these jokers finally got the hint and broke up, already.

I never thought this to be possible, but this makes that Mayhem rehearsal (Pure Fucking Armageddon) sound like fucking Bon Jovi. This is almost as uncatchy as Von! On a macroscopic level, the entire album just about sounds the same from beginning to end, with a few exceptions (the intros to the songs, basically): lots of blasting, indecipherable vocals, blurry guitars. Man oh man, that guy likes his snare drum.

Is it bad? Surprisingly, it is not a complete atrocity. But no, it is not actually good. So yes, it is bad. It's better than Dimmu Borgir, which pretty much is this, except a whole lot slicker and faggier (this album may be dumb, but it doesn't make me cringe ever, so let's give it some credit). It's a whole lot better than Marduk, which pretty much is this, except even more blaringly monotone. It's comparable to Nifelheim, except this doesn't have a terrifying drop in quality after throwing in a few cool passages to start with. In fact, it gets better as time goes on. By "Heathens", the drums aren't nearly as loud, and the guitars get more space in the mix. The riffs, however, aren't particularly memorable. They sound like Venom in a blender, for the most part. "Storming Vengeance" is probably the highlight of the album, but even that is at best described as an incoherent mess. This is chaos, but not that cool Possessed kind of chaos. Lots of swirling, misshapen riffs that sound poorly thought out. Single-note tremolo stuff seems to echo Pleasure to Kill, but so distantly that the influence is almost accidental. The only really memorable riff I can detect is in the last song, and not only does it sound like an Eric Burdon and the Animals riff, but it is soon blown away by a cacophany of badly distorted vocals and pseudo-random drums.

All in all, this album begs the philosophical question... is it norsecore if it's from the other hemisphere?? Well, not really - it's got more metal riffs than your average norsecore album, but again, it's not really something you'd put in the same sentence as Welcome to Hell. Or, as I mentioned before, that PFA rehearsal. There's an uncanny resemblance here, except, for whatever reason, the PFA rehearsal sounds better. I think it's because the drums aren't as overbearing, there's a much more prominent Venom/Sodom influence, and the vocals not as digitally awful. Here, the vocals are mixed so loud that at times they distort. That's not necro, that's just bad.

In fact, that about sums up this whole album. It's not necro. It's just bad.