OCTAGON

A delightful romp through lo-fi U.S. black metal, heavy on the sadomasochism, misogyny and good old-fashioned violence. This is that bottom-of-the-trashcan stuff you either love or hate, with almost comically bad vocals and sub-basement production, but OCTAGON manage to be creepily compelling in their orgy of primal lust and murder.

Musically, OCTAGON capture the off-the-rails ludicrousness of old VENOM at times, but also evince a weirdly pretentious, melodic streak (see the last two minutes of "Psychotic Erotic") and a mastery of tempo changes that keeps things interesting. And really, "The Error That You Are" would be a standard verse-chorus-verse rock and roll song, if you hosed off all the dried puke and graveyard dirt.

The vocals aren't any worse than what you've heard on countless old-school BM releases, but they are pretty weak and silly sounding at times. It's also kinda hard to take these harrowing tales of S&M, murder and molestation too seriously, given their general air of eighth-grade Goth poetry (to say nothing of the Jack Skellington tattoo on the singer's arm). It's a nice change from the usual pseudo-satanic heap of mystical bullshit, but should be taken with just as much of a grain of salt.

Those aforementioned bits of primitive arrangement and churning, sometimes disturbingly off-key melody make OCTAGON a cut above most subterranean "tr00 kvlt" black metal out there. It'll all be academic to 99.99% of the world, of course, and that's as it should be — this is for an elite (read: nerdy) few to pick apart and enjoy for its deliberately sickened, mud-and-blood vibe.