BALFOR Barbaric Blood (2010) CD

Ukrainian black metal has always operated at a different temperature to the Scandinavian stuff, somewhere between the cold and the truly unhinged, and Balfor understood that assignment completely. Barbaric Blood (2010) is exactly what it sounds like: dense, aggressive, and entirely committed to the premise.

This is blackened death metal with the serial numbers filed off, blast beats buried under riff after riff, and an atmosphere that owes as much to Eastern European folk grimness as it does to any obvious genre template. Not a band that spent a lot of time worrying about whether the production was too raw. They did not. It wasn't. Part of a wave of Ukrainian extreme metal that quietly built one of the more interesting underground scenes of the 2000s while nobody in the west was paying attention.

Standard jewel case CD, 2010 release.

Fans of: Hate, Necronomicon, Dark Fortress, Gorgon, blackened death metal, dark aesthetic extreme metal.