[ALBUM REVIEW] Holodomor - Témoignages de la Gnose Terrestre

Genre - Black/Death Metal

1. Fall into Time
2. The Spell of Black Affliction
3. Tribulation Stigmata
4. Evoke
5. The Iconoclast

 War metal has always been a somewhat abstract and controversial tag for this style of music, it is a somewhat loose description for the uninitiated but when you look at its roots that go back to bands like Blasphemy, Bestial Warlust and even the thrashier Sarcofago it begins to become clear how this tag emerged. For me it’s a perfect description for the unforgiving brutal, primitive depravity that current acts like Revenge and Conqueror are peddling; the musical embodiment of bullets, barbed wire and barbarity, and a sound which this act, Holodmor lean themselves towards. My initial thoughts were “Wait, this isn’t Canadian?” No they’re actually from the rather more trivial South West England, certainly not an area known for its metal to say the least.  

As expected Témoignages de la Gnose Terrestre is just downright filthy and unpolished and while the aural assault only sticks around for a brief seventeen minutes or so it’s more than enough to appreciate what they have on offer as anything more would have started to become a bit onerous to say the least. Straight from the opening chords to “Fall into Time” and through to the end of “The Iconoclast” you’re bombarded with a flurry of incendiary riffing and drumming and Adam’s savage vocals dripping in desperation, almost verging on the edge of insanity.

You can instantly tell their main influences are derived from that of the Teutonic thrash scene with a major dose of dishevelled Helmkamp influenced barbarity clawing through in all aspects of the band’s music. Though while influenced by a lot of those aforementioned ‘war’ metal bands, it avoids the genre’s biggest problem in that as volatile and berserk as the blast ridden drumming, riffing and vocals are, it still manages to retain an element of a coherent structure that many others lack. You could argue a lot of the songs are pretty similar but then again this is a genre for which diversity was never a forte, though the riffing is varied enough and constantly shifting form to avoid needless repetition.

Fair enough it’s not quite as memorable as some of the acts that spearhead the Canadian and Aussie scenes, and it is rather short but it still is utterly potent, twisted as hell and never lets up in its unholy purge right until the very last note, leaving you nothing but a pile of smouldering ashes by the end. For those musical sadists who love their black and thrash metal from the outermost extremities of the genre, those that worship at the temples of Angelcorpse and bands of similar ilk then Holodomor’s Neitzschean influenced annihilation is an must listen. Violent doesn’t even cut it, with material as brutal as this they’ll be getting a GBH charge filed against them soon. 

8/10

Sounds like - Angelcorpse, Sarcofago, Bestial Warlust

Originally written for Metalcrypt