It’s never too late for a review of a worthy Iron Bonehead Productions album, especially in the case of Warpvomit’s 2016 release, the underrated, Barbaric Triumph of Evil, war metal’s best release from last year.
War metal like this is always welcome at Cvlt Nation. This bombastic, vocal-vomit ridden full-length album has not received much press coverage, in spite of the fact that Barbaric Triumph of Evil slays remorselessly throughout its runtime. With songtitles like “The Vultures Circling Megiddo,” and “Obsequies of Sodomancy” a band must ensure that the music measure up to the steep expectations for an Iron Bonehead Productions release with atypical song titles. Sure enough, Barbaric Triumph of Evil impressed me the first time I heard it, and listening to all out carnage like this is easily the most fun one can draw from the experience of listening to this type of music.
The guitar sounds really heavy here. There’s so much grit on the strings, the guitar creates a wall of sound just by downpicking. The divebomb solos are also great, sounding very disharmonic. Best solos of 2016 must include Warpvomit’s lead section on Void Before the Altar, and this type of soloing is much more fun than anything I have ever heard mainstream metal bands typically do with their elvish little hands. The solos on Barbaric Triumph of Evil suit my air guitar skills to perfection, the sort of solos that perforate my skin pores with oxidation, coagulating the cold blood running in my veins. Dead of Mayhem fame said it best: someday my blood will freeze and I will die a horrible painful death, he was once reported as saying. Death is only the beginning. In Warpvomit’s world, we are one epic battle away from the Apoclaypse.
The drums sound like tanks are grinding cobblestone roadways with their moving steel parts, and rubble from buildings is crumbling in messy ruins of mortar and rock everywhere. The bass adds a burgeoning weight to the mix, and the production values suitably capture the guitar riffs in all their downtuned glory. The transitions are predictably smooth, and the vocals sometimes give hint at catchy sing-along choruses, all in the band’s penultimate war metal style.
Some songs on Barbaric Triumph of Evil go by unnoticed, but not in the way that suggests it is unlikely to please the listener. The album goes by in a hurry, and nine tracks worth of runtime is a lot of time going by due to one’s sheer listening enjoyment. This type of war metal is easily the type branded for its misanthropy and dedication to devastation. The music on Barbaric Triumph of Evil is purely antinomic, antithetic for the enjoyment of hearing a soundtrack to the end of the world as we know it. After all, nothing justifies war than the fear that one must defend himself at the expense of his perceived enemy. War suits egos inherent in the world’s decision-makers. Nothing can be more brutal than the truth that war this music represents is real. Warpvomit is fantastic, and Barbaric Triumph of Evil may go down as the record least likely to champion trve metal in 2016 and beyond due to poor media coverage. The metal community is vast, diverse, but degenerative in the majority’s preference to mediocre music typical of the ubiquitous. Warpvomit is the new elite. Hail Warpvomit! Hail Barbaric Triumph of Evil!
To preach a sermon for fitting tribute to a band like Warpvomit is superfluous. Barbaric Triumph of Evil may be too extreme for most, nearly impossible for most metal fans to sit through, rendered glassy-eyed by visions of holocaustic war. For the brutality and sheer horror of war in its essence, there must be fitting tribute. Warpvomit’s Barbaric Triumph of Evil is an experience, an art form so revered by the community that supports it, its very existence foreshadows the opinions of men and women who ultimately come to grips that war is a necessary part of the world we live in, simply for conflicts that only require a certain level of forgiveness and understanding to avoid war at all costs. Play this soundtrack to never-ending war on the battlefields of tomorrow. Tomorrow may very well be a day away from complete and total annihilation, so stream this now.
