CoC : Tsatthoggua - Hosanna Bizarre : Review

Tsatthoggua - _Hosanna Bizarre_
(Osmose Productions, 1996)
by: Henry Akeley (6 out of 10)

These over-energetic lunatics proudly describe their style as "satanic-devastating-black-sadomaso-mad-whipping HYPERSPEED metal." Apparently this is the style you get when you take the basic Impaled Nazarene sound, augment it with loud, screechy keyboards, and crank out compositions as quirky and furious as anything by Brutal Truth. Kinda weird. (In fact, there are quite a few parts of the disk that sound, I swear, like old Destruction LP's played at 45 rpm instead of 33. Not that that's necessarily bad.) This is totally crazed music which only occasionally attempts to be catchy, and often becomes so frenetic that it makes more famous purveyors of the standard fast-black-metal formula seem laid back by comparison. But even though that description might sound enticing, I end up being kind of bored by this release. It definitely has its moments (best among them the blasting "Worm of Sin"), but most of the album's riffs are quite uninspired, and the jumpy song structures do little to hold one's interest. (Plus, the overall sound, though thick, is incredibly high-pitched, with keyboards mixed very loud.) This is totally ferocious stuff; it's just that Tsatthogua's song-writing prowess doesn't keep pace with their all-out need for speed.

(article published 18/11/1996)