KERASPHORUS – Cloven Hooves at the Holocaust Dawn 12” EP review

KERASPHORUS – Cloven Hooves at the Holocaust Dawn 12” EP
Nuclear War Now Productions

I really get off on hateful music, seriously I do. In a world that operates like a clown car and places a happy face on everything from politics to toilet paper it’s refreshing to sit back and relax to the sound of something hateful. I’m not talking about one-sided meanness, that’s for losers. I’m talking about the all consuming supersonic hate fuck. I actually listen to this stuff at night when I shut everything down to crash out. Not that the music is sleep inducing but it’s just comforting like a warm glass of milk. The man who fronts KERASPHORUS, Peter Helmkamp, knows all about hateful music and its power to calm those of us who look at humanity and mostly see maggot infested meat. This man’s past endeavors include such favorites as ORDER FROM CHAOS and ANGELCORPSE. His newest project does not let up one bit in fact this session of torture hasn’t even reached its full potential.

Cloven Hooves at the Holocaust Dawn has just four songs but its four cuts of pure unadulterated blackened grind. Guitar, bass, drums and vocals combined to become an audio assault of brutal proportions. The first cut “The Abyssal Sanhedrin” starts out slow as if the holocaustic doom is descending upon the world and then suddenly explodes to rip it to pieces. The blast beats are like a hundred M-60 machine guns firing at once. The guitars and bass are like tanks rolling and crushing bodies to pulp. The best part is that it bleeds into the next cut “Aesoth Paradigm” which continues the relentless assault. What follows is simply more of the same as in punishment. “Disturb the Furthest Stars” is obviously my favorite cut on here out of the four fuckin monsters. It’s the shortest song coming in at just over three minutes but every second is all out war which never lets up for anything. In fact it just gets more intense till the final seconds when everything around you erupts into a fiery explosion with just you and this release left unscaved and there’s still one more song to go which is “Swarm Intelligentsia”.

Cloven Hooves at the Holocaust Dawn is black, death and grind combined to create the ultimate destructive release of carnage upon unsuspecting listeners. How great is it that I’m reviewing this on the night of a full moon, coincidence I don’t think so. Peter Helmkamp on bass and vocals along with J. Read on drums and B. Wolaniuk on guitar have created something that’s pure war metal. Yeah I know a few other bands that have that claim to fame placed upon them. Be that as it may once you listen to this then you’ll see others as armchair generals. I’m going to sleep well tonight.

www.nwnprod.com/