Thromvosis – Proclamation of the Smegmatic Warcult Review

[Cover art by Khaos Art]

If the gas-masked, ammo-clad baphomet with iron cross abs sitting atop a pile of human skulls on the black/white/red cover art combined with the words “smegma,” “Proclamation,” and “warcult” mean anything to you, surely you already know what to expect from Greece’s Thromvosis.

Hell, if you’ve made it this far, then what am I even doing here? You’re already listening because it looks sick as fukk and probably smells just as awful–best I can do here is tell you that if you’re into this sort of thing, it lives up to the hype of the cover and stench of the title.

While somewhat crudely recorded at the band’s rehearsal space in central Macedonia, Thromvosis nevertheless regard Proclamation Of The Smegmatic Warcult as their first album–and if I have to explain why, go back and listen to Blasphemy’s Fallen Angel Of Doom, Proclamation’s Advent Of The Black Omen, and Archgoat’s Angelcunt for a lesson in how to record an album in a basement with the gravestone toppling buddies your mom refuses to give snacks to. So much of what makes those records so great is the energy captured in the room, the spontaneous feeling of violence and desecration trapped within four isolated walls.

Many contemporary warcult bands do a fantastic job of perverting cleaner, layered production, but Thromvosis’s primary objective is capturing raw and unfiltered blasphemy. The guitar tone is thin but razor sharp, slicing flesh as the bass batters the bones with the subtly of a mace; or perhaps a plunger violently glorping excreted remains with a thick rubber plunger that have somehow coagulated their way into the pipeage of the kitchen sink. The result is grindy, boneheaded meatshredding Metal Ov War in the tried and true method. It’s blisteringly ignorant and full of that early Carcass sort of grind of grisly death that so oft gets left by the wayside in the attempt to stack more bullet belts and lines of the devil’s dandruff on the stage than the next boneheaded meatmonger with a B.C. Rich Warlock, a bootlegged DAW, and a pair of wraparound safety sunglasses they got from the construction job they worked for a week and a half before getting fired thanks to the biweekly drug test for–you guessed it–cocaine.

The riffs are meat ‘n’ potatoes war metal delivered with foolhardy spirit and conviction–while nothing new, Thromvosis set up the battlefield against the False Redeemer with the two principle selling factors on Proclamation of the Smegmatic Warcult: the percussion and the vocals. Though the drums may not quite be melting on the level of Revenge’s J. Read, they are a study in instinctual, energetic playing. The war skins meld into the music in a relentless display of blasting, fills, and tastefully placed cymbal hits–especially when the band dives into Archgoat-levels of doom inferno. Bludgeonenly confident, they still manage to color the violent space of the electric barrage as the band grasps for the excrements borne of the bowels of hell, diving deep into the spiraling black hole of Heck’s Municipal Waste Service.

The best for last, of course: the vocals. A phlegmatic, unholy regurgitation gargles sanguine nightmares beneath the screeching battle cries that murggle their way through the mud ‘n’ blood-soaked trenches. The voice of the band rips forth from Hell itself, like a forceful plunge that kicks back between intestinal gargles and painful shrieks in a diarrheatic give-and-take between torture and torturer. Perhaps a bit overly highlighted in the mix, but it’s difficult to fault the band for not repressing the satanic upchucks from heaving over the top and into a forcible spotlight when they’re bringing more heat than a drunken decision to eat the tacos from the U-Haul truck at the gas station parking lot at 3am. It is a disgusting abomination of the mammalian throat, and largely what kept me coming back for more of the hellacious excrement-flinging torment of Thromvosis.

If you’re into war metal and aren’t into this dung tornado, you aren’t listening to it loud enough. Eat molten lead and a heaping helping of goatshit, fucko.