CoC : Azarath - Diabolic Impious Evil : Review

Azarath - _Diabolic Impious Evil_
(Pagan Records, 2006)
by: James Montague (8 out of 10)

This album will probably score extra points because I just witnessed my football team blow a 1-0 lead and lose against the team that I've openly mocked for years as the sporting equivalent of a collision between two trains full of suicide bombers, so I'm naturally feeling a bit pissy. This is the perfect mood for the kind of steaming, bloody blasphemy dished up by Azarath, a balls-out thrashing death metal motherfucker if ever there was one. You may not know this band, but you know the members: the drummer from Behemoth, the bass/vocalist and guitarist from Damnation and the guitarist from Yattering make this somewhat of a Polish all-star quartet. But unlike an all-star team, or my awful football club, these guys aren't just showing up for the paycheck. They operate as a single entity, flaying the listener with a merciless barrage of blast beats, devastating death growls, wild guitar leads and the satisfying plod of a much-abused bass guitar.

Damn, I can't believe we lost that goddamned game. We had so many chances to bury the contest, but we spurned our chances with some woeful finishing. If only we had the precision displayed on _Diabolic Impious Evil_, an album which answers the question "how would Deicide's _Legion_ sound if played by better musicians and with better production?" Here it is -- faster, more relentless, with a rawer yet clearer and heavier production and lyrics containing about the same level of blasphemy, culminating in the complete insanity of "For Satan My Blood", a song lasting only 100 seconds but containing around 400 beats, twenty guitar solos and thirty eight thousand "Satans". And you thought Morbid Angel's "Bleed for the Devil" was as spastic as it gets.

I was a bit disappointed to hear these guys were a side project of well-known death metal veterans, as I thought I'd be uncovering a prodigious new extreme band this evening, but what the hell. Azarath kicks arse, and Liverpool Football Club is fucking useless. Now which song should I listen to to appease my wounded soul, "Baptized in Sperm of the Antichrist", "Screamin' Legions Death Metal" or "Intoxicated by Goat Vomit"? Answer: all three. Bring it on, bitches.

Contact: http://www.azarath.tcz.pl

(article published 11/2/2007)