vote
7.5
- Bands:
HOC EST BELLUM - Duration: 00:29:12
- Available from: 06/29/2026
- Label:
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Time To Kill Records
Another coup scored by our local Time To Kill Records: with the present “Filth Majesty”, the Roman label celebrates the long-distance debut of Hoc Est Bellum, a Finnish trio whose mission, nomen omenis to bring us down through an act of ruthless sonic warfare.
Black-death dark and primitive, wild and violent, acidic but, strange to say, orderly in its infernal pandemonium. On the one hand the compatriots Archgoat, on the other, kilometers and kilometers away, the Australians Bestial Warslut: these are the two main references that surround the rough pace of the new Scandinavian reality.
'Glacial' and 'furious' are the main adjectives of this first album, and find their realization in the double vocal formula chosen by Hoc Est Bellum: the mangy growl of bassist JB (credited on the record with the high-sounding name of Devouring Doommouth of Lunar Extinction and Nuclear Propaganda) lowers the emotional frequencies arising from the excruciating and squirting scream of drummer R. Charon (alias Sakari Forsman), a true war machine behind the skins, capable of distributing classic assaults in blast-beat, alternating them properly with more cadenced and lugubrious passages (“Vomit Black Ecstasy” and “Blood Of The VVytches”).
In the background, the six-string work of Rituäl Vömitist (born Samuli Similä), tasked with breaking through the last auditory defenses in our possession: riffs full of acidity which however do not resolve themselves into a pure and simple agglomeration of notes, perhaps confused, with the obvious aim of creating disorder and desolation without rhyme or reason. Instead, both sensations reach our stomach thanks to precise and structured teamwork, conceived, precisely, to break down any frills of the case.
And it is also thanks to the rejection of the sterile precision of modern production that Hoc Est Bellum manage to churn out a warm and organic, immediate and physical sound, building an album that breathes with a fragrant – strange to believe, but not too much – sulphur.
The mixture of stabs in the face, such as “Passion Of The Antichrist”, also well calibrated towards the end, with certainly more mysterious episodes (such as the aforementioned “Blood Of The VVitches” and “Serpent Of The Black Pit”) where the less aggressive soul of the band emerges, is one of the most effective weapons of the Finnish combo, which with the subsequent “Nightside Necromancy” shows us in just under two minutes that lacerating game of 'two entries' highlighted a few lines above; Charon's crazy screams intertwine copiously with JB's cavernous uvula, creating a jovial vocal circle.
Time to Kill calls, Hoc Est Bellum responds: a new bond is formed with an admittedly lethal objective.
First shot, first target down!
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
