Bat Magic – Feast of Blood (Vampires Are Cool Again Black Metal)
It didn’t surprise me I liked this one. Usually I’d pass on such a simplistic cover with an obvious vampire bent that’s likely to be more kitsch than clique. I mean Jesus Christ it states right there on Bandcamp “RECORDED IN A CASTLE UNDER THE BLOOD MOON ANNO MMXVI.” ALL CAPS too, I didn’t add that myself. But yet I knew from the color scheme, the bats, the super-saturated red font in anglo-text style, and that cool hand, that Bat Magic was going to tell me something I hadn’t heard before. I mean lol the keyboardist is referred to as “He Who Drinks the Blood of Sleeping Babies,” but you know it’s all the same dude who’s messing with you to make vampyric [sic] black metal cool again by self-referencing the shit out of it.
Feast of Blood is pure Eurotrash horror in blackened wonderment. Bat Magic takes a lo-fi approach, yet not so far that it sounds like trash masquerading as Brujah when it’s actually Toreador (ugh). This is pure dungeon terror LARP folks holy shit. Bat Magic somehow takes the most banal of vampyric black metal and crafts from it a connoisseur’s selection of the dark. Frosty riffs bite upon the toes, the keyboards are what you thought Burzum would sound like in prison, and man, oh man, that blood drinking vocal presence! Everything about this should have been shit, but it’s not, and even if it was the solo at the end would erase any mistakes made prior. Recently there have been a few examples of metal vampire resurgence, and add this to the black metal pack, probably at the head, blood dripping from fangs long-worn form chewing upon bones at vespers.
Written by Stanley, Devourer of Souls
Bat Magic – Feast of Blood
Babylon Doom Cult Records, Ordo Vampyr Orientis, Sore Ear Collective
Cover Art: Unknown
4.8 / 5
