Regular readers of the Crucial Blast list may have noticed that I have a pretty serious hard-on for Gehenna. Back in the 90s, the band produced what might have been the most terrifying music to come out of the hardcore underground, and was notorious for acts of violence and mayhem at their shows. In the years since, I've grown to become even more enamored of them, not only for the absolutely vicious blend of West Coast hardcore and filthy, ancient black thrash that Gehenna perfected on records like Under The Gravehill and The War Of The Sons Of Light And The Suns Of Darkness, but also for their apparent total lack of concern for other people's feelings and opinions, and what seems to be a hilariously obnoxious sense of humor at work underneath all of the narco abuse, fistfights, and chaoslust. So it should be no surprise that this fairly recent (came out in '10) split featuring Gehenna gets a huge recommendation from yours truly. The masters of fucked-up blackened hardcore offer two new blasts of awesomely mental thrash here, starting with the PCP-addled "Disciple In My Own Image" (with some of the craziest delay abuse I have ever heard on a metal guitar solo), the lead guitars dive-bombing and screaming all over the placed, the band veering from ripping filthy Slayerized thrash into messy, primitive black metal like a demented , drug-damaged Hellhammer jam; and ending with "Lord Of The Witch", a slower, moodier song that starts with slow eerie arpeggios and distant wailing guitar, reminiscent of those slower evil interludes you'd hear on Integrity records, then lurches into hellish doom, a lurching crushing dirge flooded with ridiculous amounts of reverb that becomes lost in deafening waves of distorted noise at the end.

I would have picked this up just for the two Gehenna songs, obviously, but the record also has the Belgian band Blind To Faith on the flipside, and anyone who loves that evil metallic "Holy Terror" sound like myself will want to hear these guys. I'd heard of 'em for awhile but never gt around to checking them out until this 7" came in. I was shocked by just how much Blind To Faith remind me of early Ringworm, all raw and hideous occult-tinged metallic hardcore with a singer that sounds eerily like Ringworm front man Human Furnace. The first song "R.J." offering a mix of snarling violent hardcore with some massive Sabbathy riffage, and the song "Icon" delivering a more blasting, black metal influenced assault. This band kills - expect to see more of their stuff here at Crucial Blast in the future.