HostiumThe way that this starts off with its creepy, death-like whisperings and underproduction values suggests this is some black metal piece from the early 1990s. This horror-like ghastliness in fact comes from Canada. Brutal drumming and razor-sharp guitar sounds mingle with the crawly growls. So is “Through the Realms of Oblivion”. Pleasantries are not on Hostium’s agenda. “Holy Spirit of Satan” starts funereally before musical chaos and fury are let loose like smoke pouring out of an incinerator.

It’s surprising that “The Bloodwine of Satan” is a debut album, following a limited 2008 demo “Pissing Incest on the Virginborn”. The intensity of this album is fully fledged and captures all the moods of a blood-drenched Satanic ritual. After the chaotic fury and violence of “Holy Spirit of Satan”, “Bloodwine Chalice” is utterly extreme and nasty. The out-of-the box instrumentals, which have “old school” written all over them, are punctuated with unfathomable screams and the kind of fearful ambiance that any Satanic Lord would wish to convey. Deep, chasmic growls are the order of the day and night in this world of black metal violence and chaos. In fact it’s skilfully done as the scene shifts between creeping menace and anarchic and seemingly explosions of malevolence. Imagine expanses of inescapably dark caverns with terrible sounds, uncontrollable fires, frightening echoes and deathly screams. Such is each track of this war-like creation. “Epitaph” and “From Soulless Ruins” are fast and strangulating. The guitar growls, the drum beats mercilessly and there’s a kind of thrashiness about “Thirst for Destruction” but let’s not get carried away with real world values here. “Thirst for Destruction” slows down ominously but the drum beats patiently as to signal the march to certain death. Distant and despairing screams can be heard. But the terrible winds blow up a final storm and brings  this venomous work to an end.

Whatever their motivation may be, Hostium set out very clearly where they sit and represent Satanism at its ugliest. You can’t add twists and turns when it’s about destruction on this scale but they do use all the tools at their disposal within the black metal genre to represent nastiness in its extremest form.

(7.5/10 Andrew Doherty)

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