Nocturnal Blood

This excellent first full-length from this one-man California black metal project really pushes the limits of what sounds like shit and what sounds like music. Don't get me wrong: this sounds like shit. Individual songs, individual parts of songs ― heck, any given ten seconds of music on this disc ― are completely indistinguishable from any other part here. Horrible. But, and you saw this coming, that's what makes it great. This is precisely the kind of release we look to Hell's Headbangers for: 26 minutes of non-stop black/death madness, under-produced, raw, to the point of treble-heavy ear chafing, but with just enough manic German thrash and bestial death fed through the machinations of nuclear black to keep the tossed-off, sod-off, black thrash machine-gun attack interesting. Which translates, roughly, to: no rational human being can honestly pretend to enjoy this, but those of us who enjoy periodic trips to the border of what is extreme and what is parody love the hell out of it while we're there. But who wants to live there?