47th part of short reviews.
V/A – The Heavy Metal Cowboys of Botswana
Year of release: 2019
Label: Svart Records
Rating: 5 / 10
A rather interesting collection from the Finnish label Svart Records, dedicated to the metal scene of Botswana - a country that most metal listeners are unlikely to be able to show on the world map, even if they are given three attempts. Meanwhile, the scene of Botswana turns out to be one of the leading in Africa. To demonstrate its strengths, six local bands called on to offer two tracks (except for PMMA project that provided only one song). Looking at the colorful photographs of African metalheads I imagined a certain clumsy and naive Heavy Metal made by 30-year old standards, but it turned out that the material on the compilation s much more modern, and not in a very good sense. At my place I have several metal compilations from yearly 2000s, filled by shits of worthless bands from countries such as Macedonia, who played something in between death metal, thrash, or groove with a faceless sound and zero level of imagination. As it turned out, Botswana is playing something like that. Only the sound has pretty high quality. I'll go through them names. CRACKDUST is the same averaged thrash death, not worthy of praise or blame. METAL ORIZON - non-inventive Heavy Metal with a groove shade. It’s boring to listen, but they play from the heart, I give them that. OVERTHRUST - the best band in the collection; the sound is identical to CRACKDUST, but the vocalist’s roar is impressive, and the music resembles the best moments of BOLT THROWER. PMMA is some silly bullshit. STANE is the nasty Death Metal in the vein of the unforgettable “Promise” of MASSACRE. WRUST is the same nasty Death Metal, but even more annoying because of the repetitive choruses. The final feelings from the collection are sad, and not even because of the boring music, but because its African origin does not betray itself. Such mediocre material with banal song titles and basic English-language lyrics can be found in any country in the world. Therefore, I can not recommend metal from Botswana even to eccentric lovers of exotic stuff, because there's nothing exotic about it.
MEUCHELMORD – Waffenträger
Year of release: 2019
Label: Purity Through Fire
Rating: 6,7 / 10
Very good German extreme metal. The Teutonic melody in the beginning resembles BILSKIRNIR, however, percussion parts far from RAC motifs make a big difference. For example, in the first song, attention is drawn to purely militaristic sounding marching beatings, and in the second, hyper-fast blast beats uncharacteristic for such music, referring, for example, to MARDUK and ENDSTILLE. The farther - the meaner. The album successfully retains a warlike character and tries to avoid musical repetitions, but the author does not equally well cope with all types of rhythmic structures. Therefore, some of the songs are perceived perfectly, but the other part I would throw into a trash can.
BLOODSOAKED NECROVOID – The Apocryphal Paths of the Ancient 8th Vitriolic Transcendence
Year of release: 2019
Label: Caligari Records / Iron Bonehead Productions
Rating: 8 / 10
A collection of demos from Costa Rican band founded just a year ago. Gravely blackened Metal of Death with a characteristic sound that can be described as a “rumble from the abyss." HELLVETRON fans will love it. Great!
PRIMOGENORUM – Ye Last Ordeal
Year of release: 2019
Label: Lunar Apparitions
Rating: 6 / 10
Ukrainian Black Metal in the vein of the old. No similarities to anyone in particular, but it's not very specific either. Dirty-sounding, dreary, unfriendly music, which is unlikely to ever have a lot of listeners - not because it's bad, but because it can’t become popular simply because of its nature. Decay, darkness and doom.
FRONT BEAST – Shadows
Year of release: 2019
Label: Helldprod Records
Rating: 7,9 / 10
Fresh release from the obsessed German. Came out only on cassettes. FRONT BEAST can be criticized for not always successful compositions, but it cannot be denied that this project always plays music as if time had stopped in 1997, if not earlier. “Shadows” goes even further, to the primitive bloody roots of extreme metal. The EP sounds like a 30 years old rehearsal recorded on a 4-track recorder in the basement, and the music on it ignores all Black Metal patterns except the earliest ones. There are a lot of riffs in the vein of first CELTIC FROST records, and the rest of the parallels are pointless - it's just old metal, that's all. Great release.
English (UK) 
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