ONSLAUGHT KOMMAND/ KOMMANDANT
KOMMANDANT “Exhibition of Conquest”
ONSLAUGHT KOMMAND “Visions of Blood and Gore”
By Dr. Abner Mality
A couple of new EP’s from bands with similar names on tap. Well, maybe “Exhibition of Conquest” should be considered a mini-LP as it’s longer than an EP but awful short to be a full length.
Let’s look at ONSLAUGHT KOMMAND first. This band comes from Chile’s fertile scene and they specialize in some super groovy and super gross death metal the way I like it. Easy to digest bulldozer riffs coated with a thick layer of slime. The first track “Old Death Ripper” is like old BOLT THROWER meeting ASPHYX with diseased vocals. Not terribly original, but by cracky, I’m a sucker for stuff like this. “Headless” is in much the same mode and the title track ups the speed quite a bit with an almost grindcore attack. The boys finish things off with a cover of PUNGENT STENCH’s “Dead Body Love” which seems tailor made for ONSLAUGHT KOMMAND. The EP is a short and effective blast of gruesome gore...I will keep an eye dangling out of my socket for future efforts from this bunch.
KOMMANDANT, this mysterious black metal collective from Chicago, have been gone for so long that I figured they went to the glue factory. “Exhibition of Conquest” announces their return and this is an intriguing dose of very martial sounding black metal. The production gives things a rough-hewn feel but the songs are very well constructed, with interesting riffage and a somewhat avant garde feel. The title track has an extremely ominous and doomy feel, while “The Standard” plays around with a jagged approach and experimentation with ice cold guitar songs.
The problem with these guys is that many people will take a superficial look at this album and have them pegged as Nazis. I don’t think this is the case, but I can forgive those looking at this for the first time for getting that impression. The band name, the album name, song titles like “Zweikampf” and “Arsenal”...all contribute to this. Hell, the song “Arsenal” has a break of two minutes where what sounds like a German beer hall war anthem is sung with great gusto. The whole album has a Germanic, militaristic feel. I’m familiar with KOMMANDANT’s past works and don’t think they swing that way, but I’d be very surprised if a couple of naive reviewers don’t label them as modern day stormtroopers. That would be unfortunate, because this might be the best thing I’ve heard from them sonically and makes me want to hear more from this phase of the band.
Both of these are worth picking up, but KOMMANDANT really seems to be stretching things beyond the expected.