Review by Alex on December 17, 2018.

This Romanian 3 piece plays a blend of black metal, thrash metal and grind-core on their debut titled Duhul Belicos. 

There is an early first wave of black metal style heard throughout the demo recording. “Mostenirea Macelului” and “Stefan La Moarte” have a primal sound that revisits the early era of thrash metal and the later period of 1st wave black metal. Meanwhile, “Strunga” frequently toggles between thrashing and punk rock techniques. The guitar work is decent but could have benefited from a bit more technicality but does have enough variety to prevent sounding like a weak effort, after all, the record is only 13 minutes in length. There is a slow traditional doom section featured on the track “Drumul Blestemat” that is the longest on the record clocking in at just over 4 minutes. The vocals sound like a mixture of light black metal shrieks and death metal growls. However, the front-man has a gurgling rasp to his technique of enunciation, giving the music and band a identity they can call their own; also having sung the lyrics in the native Romanian tongue did help in this aspect as you can hear the effect of the language's accent in the vocals. The production is good, there is a-lot of emphasis placed on the snare and guitar distortion, yet all the instruments sound well balanced audibly. I would have liked the record to have a few more tracks to aid in the bands signature sound given the many audible Marduk influences that are much more prominently heard on the opening song “Drumul Blestemat" and is frequently hinted at on the following entries.

For a new band this debut is not bad at all, hence there is potential to do better for their next entry. A new force is preparing its arsenal in Romania.

Rating: 5.7 out of 10