Damnation

The first full album from Damnation (following up a series of successful demos and a many years of fermentation), Destructo Evangelia is raw and grim black metal all the way. Surface image reveals a lot about what’s inside in this case — the black and white medieval woodcut cover art, recurring inverted crosses, the division of songs into "side darkness” and "side evil,” photos of evilly-decorated members known only as Churchburner and Insulter of Jesus Christ — all conspiring and contributing to an aura of Nordic authenticity. The music itself drips in reverb, an evil drone only occasionally unhinged by the indestructible groove of a rock’n’roll riff. Two of the eight tracks are covers — Vulcano’s "Bloody Vengeance” and Bathory’s "Armageddon” — performed in the spirit dominating the whole package: true, old school malevolence.