Bestial Kruzifix666ion

The old saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover.” It’s a good thing the saying says book and not album because some albums you can tell exactly what to expect just by looking at the cover. Take Bleeding Fist’s first full length album, “Bestial Kruzifix666ion”. Just look at it: it screams murky and dirty black metal: a pig’s head with spikes or nails in its face, skulls aplenty and pentagram made out of barbwire, all of which is contained by a lovely border of unspent ammunition. Rather than subjecting the listener to gimmicks and studio trickery, Bleeding Fist offers an album of straight up black metal with no frills.

If you’re looking for clean and well produced black metal, “Bestial Kruzifix666ion” is not what you’re looking for. Everything is produced with a layer of mud and grime, which works both for and against Bleeding Fist. The muddy production gives the album a very nostalgic, late eighties to early nineties feel, but that should not be mistaken for sloppiness or vapid amateurism, as the instruments are still very well played. It does make the listening experience more challenging as more concentration is needed to hear the guitar lines that are hiding behind the obnoxiously loud snare pops. This is probably because of the "recorded live" in the studio approach. “Bestial Kruzifix666ion” is fairly standard on all accounts, with fast guitars, raspy vocals and blast beats. The music is played well, with a strong mix of trem infused, blast beat ridden speed and dark and brooding slower sections. “Celebration of the Third” clearly shows Bleeding Fist’s ability to change seamlessly from these faster section into the brooding, atmospheric sections, with the drum beat slowing and an eerie high pitched lead line bringing the band to a crawl. The vocals are of the shouted and raspy type, but are much more intelligible than most, but the lyrical themes are mostly generic satanic imagery, much like the majority of black metal, so the vocals you can make out aren’t very substantial or fulfilling. While there are some interesting riffs and patterns utilized, the winding trem pattern and dirty leads on “Dissected Dominion in Blood” and the thrashy, stomping double bass kicks on “Sabbath ov Mist” come to mind, the majority of the album goes by without many hooks or strong selling points. Aside from a few nifty, fast paced fills, the drums kind of blast by without any attracting too much attention, aside from their high place in the mix, especially the snare, and with such a muddy production, the loud drums make it difficult to focus on the other instrumentation. There are some interesting lead guitar lines floating around, that sound strikingly similar to the wanky, do nothing but play fast style made famous by Kerry King, but they are not striking or engaging enough to give more than a passing nod.

If you love traditional black metal with no traces of progression or experimentation, check this out. “Bestial Kruzifix666ion” sounds like it should have been released in 1993 instead of 2009. There are much better albums out there in this style. While Bleeding Fist is good at what they do, there are just too many bands playing the same thing and they get lost in the field. This is a fairly enjoyable affair that is just too generic and nostalgic for its own good. Black metal fans if you can find this cheap then get it, but don’t go out of your way because there are much better albums out there.

Written for The Metal Observer:
http://www.metal-observer.com/