Lista de Bandas Death Metal Witchrist Beheaded Ouroboros

I must admit that some five years ago, I was starting to get bored to death (!) with the Death Metal scene in general. Every band seemed to want to be more brutal and more technical or more "slam" than the other with only a few exceptions.

Most Old School bands from the golden era of Death Metal were and are still active, but none of their recent releases seem to grasp the magic of their former glory and subsequently fail(ed) to achieve anything significant. The past seemed to be too heavy a burden for most to bear and ultimately Death Metal looked as if it was again going down the drain. Then came the revival that some call New Wave of Old School Death Metal. Thanks to a few labels like Razorback Records that somehow initiated this movement, “new” bands were and still are rediscovering what made Death Metal such a unique music and while somehow regressing towards a more primitive sound they’d give us music where the word “Death” in “Death Metal” was no longer vain. Although I must say that nowadays some of these “Old School” revivalists are also starting to plague the genre with too numerous releases, I am glad for the “change”.

Witchrist is probably one of the bands out there that took the “change” to its most drastic and linear expression. After a much remarked compilation of their two first demos, one released, the second one unreleased, there were high hopes that the New Zealand-based band would release a fantastic debut full-length. For those anxious to put their hands onto Beheaded Ouroboros, I could sum up this review with only a few words: there is no fucking way that you're going to be disappointed.

The opener is a long 8 minute piece of Death Metal ridden with that Black Metal hatred that will pound your ears with down to mid tempo excruciation. Once you start playing the CD, there is no turning back till you reach the very end of it. Dark, occult and excessively heavy, all the tracks will take you down further down the path to eternal damnation because Witchrist's music is not only music, it is somehow a deep and dark mystical experience that goes beyond a simple arrangement of musical notes.

With a sound quite typical of this part of the world, expect plodding riffs a la Ignivomous or Portal, music that keeps the legacy of occult Death Metal masters Incantation very much alive. If you’re familiar with the two aforementioned bands, let’s only say that Beheaded Ouroboros keeps the brutality of Death Transmutation but adds to it more down tempo parts that will weigh on your neck and would remind you of Archgoat's heaviness; it also has the particular sound of Portal's Seepia or Outré lest the Lovecraftian vibe and heretical madness of the Aussies.

Although it's usually hard for me to pick up a song among others where quality is equally high throughout a record, I must say I literally melted when listening to "The Cauldron". The riffing here is just fantastic and will induce an almost trance-like state. This is the kind of songs that literally should put most bands on infernal orbit. Just like “Immortal Rites” did it for Morbid Angel or more recently "Teeth into Red" for Dead Congregation, this one song is an instant classic and will transform you from a "regular" listener into an eternal devout.

The contamination has now begun and Witchrist will most likely expand their black plague onto anyone that is into real Death Metal. With such a debut, the NZ band will conquer the (under-)world and there is no doubt that every subsequent release will be highly anticipated. In the meantime, you have Beheaded Ouroboros to satisfy your hunger which, without any doubt, will be satiated.

Brewing deep in the New Zealand underground are bands such as Ulcerate, Diocletian and Witchrist, biding their time and waiting for an opportunity to have mankind experience their wrath. Beheaded Ouroboros is Witchrist's debut full length output, and promises 40 minutes of solid, primitive death metal.

If one were a fan of dirty and primitive bands, with a dark atmosphere such as Vasaeleth, Impetuous Ritual and of course, Diocletian, the fare that is presented on Beheaded Ourorobos will immediately be familiar. The band pushes themselves (and their listeners) to the extreme, opening with the longest track on the album Sorcerer of Lightning, with a slow build up to the climax and drenching the music with a dense atmosphere that almost makes it hard to breathe. If you thought Impetuous Ritual was heavy, wait till you listen to Beheaded Ouroboros. Just imagine the works of the aforementioned band, put to a slightly slower pace (even on the faster sections of the album), with the same down-tuned instruments, but with a muddier/heavier production job. Session vocalist Imprecator's vocals are tortured as fuck, and he alternates between undecipherable gurgling growls and blood curdling shrieks, fitting, and at times even going so far as to enforce the demented and ritualistic atmosphere of the music well.

Getting past the opening track, the rest of the album becomes easier to appreciate (especially for listeners who are not used to something this raw and bestial). Devour the Flesh skips the slow build up, and instead sees the band opting to just throw everything out at the listener without any reserve, and this is of course something welcome for speed maniacs. As per most other similarly styled bands, there are chaotic and seemingly senseless guitar solos included, sounding almost as if the notes are picked out of random. Adoration of Black Messiah also sees the band include some ethnic instruments, though these serve to be there just so that the band can desecrate them later, and of course, how could the usual tolling of the bells be forgotten?

With Beheaded Ouroboros, Witchrist has exemplified the utter insanity that they are able to come up with. Suffice to say, this record has managed to put their country on the international extreme metal map, and ensures that no sane man is left standing at the end of the record.