Outside my house at the moment, the world is shrouded in smoke from Canadian wildfires, so much so that the horizon is invisible, and even the amusement park a few blocks from my house seems to have disappeared entirely. It looks like the world settling from Armageddon, the aftermath of a battle that had few, if any, survivors.
The first demo from one-man war machine Horns of Abomination, leaves a similar impact after its three tracks have ravaged you. The amalgamation of death and black metal that very much sparks visions of all-out war is impossible to survive without taking on mental wounds. The tan-and-red cover art isn’t as ominous as the music inside, so it might throw you off a little bit going into your first experience. But it’s harrowing, fucked up, sometimes barely forming a solid entity and acting instead as a phantom ready to devour.
“Horns of Abomination” opens and could be a mission statement song, piercing right off the bat and pouring endless blackness over all it encounters. Sooty chaos destroys as the warped screams swim in interference, sounding inhuman, and then the playing grinds psyches. The power spreads its grip as noise fries your senses, everything ending in blood. “Necrogoat” is perversely aggressive, sinister riffs carving pathways, barbaric vocals sounding authoritative and detached. Filth crumbles under pressure and creates a toxic soot, the final sparks threatening refiring. Closer “Black Blood Offering” lets guitars spill in, the drums batter, and the growls melt any sense of sanity, beastly tensions rising. Demonic heat spikes to torturous levels, the words barely are decipherable, as if the message is for the damned, and the playing retches, leaving blood slicks behind.
Horns of Abomination have almost no trail of information about the sole creator of this madness, so we only can draw conclusions with the music, which is the way it should be anyway. This feels like wars waged in your mind, a mental damnation that should not be survivable. We have but three shots fired from this project here, and if these are any indication of what the future holds, expect it to be volatile.
For more on the band, go here: https://hornsofabomination.bandcamp.com/
To buy the album, go here: https://sentientruin.com/releases/horns-of-abomination-horns-of-abomination
For more on the label, go here: https://sentientruin.com/
Meat Mead Metal 