BLACK FUCKING CANCER: “BLACK FUCKING CANCER”

 

(We welcome guest contributor Pablo Balbontín, editor of the Spanish webzine Subterráneo, who brings us this review of the first album by California’s Black Fucking Cancer.)

The human being is such a despicable animal, capable of wishing death to its peers or to have a laugh out of their disgrace. We have all said some atrocity, which we might have regretted later (or not). Who hasn’t ever wished somone to die, or to have cancer? Well, from that pure feeling of hatred, Black Fucking Cancer was born — a power trio from San Jose, California, who have given birth to one of the most furious albums of this year, and possibly one of the best overall.

However, when someone thinks about fury in black metal, they tend to imagine bands like Marduk, Blasphemy, Archgoat… short songs, chaotic guitar solos, and frantic drumming patterns. Bringing an anology, it could be like a maniac who stabs his mother two hundred times, until there is no more skin left to tear. Instead, Black Fucking Cancer are like that alienated person who sharpens a rusty machete and takes his time to knife the victim, twisting the blade inside the guts and savoring the victim’s suffering.

 

 

That rust, could be, in musical terms, sludge and doom, styles that impregnate the band’s compositions. The mixture of sludge and black metal is one in which American musicians are experts, as the latest outputs by Coffinworm, Lord Mantis, and Primitive Man show.

The songs are not easy going: They are twisted, ugly, horrible, and false. False, because the songs lie to us;, they do not warn the listener about what is to come.

The deceit starts with “A Sign of Burning Flesh”, a raging and pretty orthodox song. The production of the song has some demo vibe, which makes it more raw (but the bass lines are still audible).

Absolute hatred… and the worst is yet to come. The fact that “Acid Ocean” endures for eight minutes makes us wonder if they are going to be following the same path as the first song. And there it is — the songs start to draw themselves into the most pure darkness, with those sludgy filthy harmonics. From here on, and until the end, the slower genres will become more prominent, always leaving a place for the accelerated wrath that the band from San Jose can summon so well.

But the exact point where Black Fucking Cancer won me over was in the transition between “Blood Stained Whore” and “SinnRitualVoid”. One starts where the other one ends — eternal noise and riffs, the rusty machete is in our entrails, the hemorrhage doesn’t stop spitting blood, and the murderer has no intention of stopping anytime soon.

Every single moment of silence is kind of a gift, because we already know that the next track will be another burst of anger that will leave us deaf and will crush our heads. Fast or slow, they are a rollercoaster of hate, all covered with a thin layer of darkness and mental insanity.

There is not a single song which could be out of place, no riff is disposable. The rhythm changes are almost perfect, even having some hardcore influences hidden within the black metal blackness. Those influences are light, subtle, almost drawn with a brush, but when the moment of truth is upon us, it gains a brutal strength.

 

If Black Fucking Cancer have been able to establish such high standards with just their first album, they are capable of big achievements. Or they could become a disappointment. It’s up to them now how to lead their own way into the future.

https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/s-t