Genre: Black / Death Metal
Country: Portugal
Label: Godz Ov War Productions
Release: 11/2019
A new band marching on Black and Death Metal tracks has sprung from beautiful Portugal with the name Kommando Baphomet, consisting of two members, N. on guitars and vocals and Vulturius on drums and backing vocals (who’s been a member in various bands and projects, so take a look, don’t be shy). As I mentioned, the basic sound elements of Kommando Baphomet are indeed Black and Death Metal, but it is easy to see that elements such as industrial, doom and sludge make their presence pompously felt. Some may think that that’s natural, since it’s the band’s first attempt; they haven’t even released a demo, they hit us directly with the full length debut “Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition”, about which I will say a few words. To start with the very simple, I find enormously cheesy (in the bad sense) the choice of the band’s name (along with the strangeness of Kommando’s writing), as well as the title of the album. Equally, the same goes for the album cover. No one said that black and white gore covers are cheesy, but this one is, with a traditional – well nowadays isn’t shocking anymore – pentagram, Baphomet goats and sculls; impressive, but trite. Moving on. Lyrically, Kommando Baphomet also rely on clichéd themes for the genre, featuring war, chaos, blasphemy and so on. Let’s go even further. Synthetically I noticed the following: stereotypical screams without any peculiarity, that is, without standing out, an outdated atmosphere and an edgy mood that slavish, while the compositions of the tracks don’t have to offer anything really original or memorable after a while. No surprises, mostly expected passages and a lack of those elements that make your fist tighten. From that point of view, I would characterize the album as completely monolithic, with all the dimensions that this concept could cover. And for those who may think that the only reason why I wrote this review is to throw shit in the fan, here are the positives: we definitely get the message from the band that they are really committed to what they do and do it with passion, that’s true. They manage to create a barbaric and primitive feeling that really suits the genre they serve, while the guitars and drums, although far from innovative ideas, have that swampy filth that sometimes gives extra points the final result. I think that introspection and an effort to find themselves in their compositions would be the best step they could take, and who knows, they may really surprise us and captivate us in the future.
