Various Artists
Death is Just the Beginning

"You're going soft. It's official."

This is how user Lector dared to comment on my review yesterday about the great Steve Wynn.

Lector wants war; a total war. So here's this black flame.

"A leaden sky where menacing black clouds are gathering; a chilly green mist rises from the ground of a cemetery. Arcane crosses of cold granite are still visible in the misty sea below, spreading across the plain; a skeletal dying tree appears in the distance. All that's missing is the skeletal hand of a zombie emerging from its centuries-old muddy grave; death is the beginning of the end, for all of us. This is how the cover of this collection looks, published in 1990 by the Teutonic record label "Nuclear Blast"; a label that, together with the English "Earache Records", has contributed to the worldwide spread of Death Metal, and extreme music in general.

About fifteen bands make up this insane work; tracks mostly recorded poorly, terribly: but that's fine for those who derive pleasure and enjoyment from this vile noise. With a technique that is mostly rough, if not subpar; bands that have made the history of sonic extremism. Some of them still exist, although they have unfortunately abandoned the brutality of their beginnings.

No melodic concessions, no slowdowns or virtuosity: only blind verbal and musical violence, through over seventy minutes of this first offspring in a long series of collections, at least seven, that over the years "Nuclear Blast" will regularly propose.

An intro of a few seconds, already brimming with black and catacombal moods: it's the first track and it's up to Defecation to kick off the following depraved minutes. Their Death Metal is aggressively beyond measure, with that torn voice that shreds the eardrums: Mitch and Mick Harris, also involved in Napalm Death, are the minds behind this project that will have a short life. The listening continues without a single moment of needed truce: Atrocity, Benediction, Pungent Stench, Righteous Pigs, Incubus. One, ten, one hundred colossal blows that literally martyr the listener. A vile flow of pestilential mud: like an overflowing Acheron that sweeps away every hold, every hope. Endless minutes, largely cacophonous.

It's the turn of the Americans Master, busy destroying and tearing apart "Children of the Grave" by the masters Black Sabbath; but the most terrifying track is the one that concludes the deadly collection. The over six minutes of "Dismembered" by the Swedes Dismember; I'll leave you to discover its (morbid) beauty. The road to Hell is indicated with the clotted blood of deep wounds that listening has (de)generated."

Stay away, don't get entangled, it could be fatal for you Lector...DEATH is just the beginning...Ahahahahahahahahahahaha...

P.S. Conceived and written in pen a long time ago on a rainy and gloomy evening, at the gates of the cemetery near my home; locked in the car, alone and in the dark. With widespread terror on me...Massacre Of The Unborn...

Ad Maiora.