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ATHANATOS  Unholy Union  7" VINYL   (Nuclear War Now! Productions)   6.50


    These Chilean black/death vets get vaguely psychedelic with their new band Athanatos, debuting with a killer demo cassette that surfaced in 2014 and which has now been reissued on 7" by Nuclear War Now. Tantalizingly described on Athanatos's Bandcamp page by one fan as sounding akin to "Dark Angel on LSD", you can definitely hear something more twisted and warped than just another black-thrash attack with this stuff, which delivers some really cool off-kilter riffage winding through these four tracks. Featuring member Hateaxes Command (aka Pablo Clares) of cult death metallers Totten Korps and Atomic Aggressor, Athanatos draws from the classic South American death-thrash sound, but filters that influence through a thick, tenebrous atmosphere of subterranean filth charged with frantic energy, a violent blast of pummeling blackened death-thrash formed from the band's mix of convoluted riffery and blasphemous, brazenly Satanic imagery delivered in fractured English that "consecrates the anal chalice". Athanatos fucking rip on this demo, belting out a crazed blast-assault of blackened chaos across the beginning of "Unholy Union", with crazed shouted vocals drenched in echo instead of the typical guttural puke-approach, giving this stuff a gruff, maniacal feel; there's a moment where the blasting heaviness suddenly stops and those bellowed, reverberant shouts come echoing out of the depths, and all of a sudden it almost sounds like Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman howling over the echoing blackness, right before it leads into an even more twisted riff-maze, the song mutating into an awesomely savage assault of warped, vaguely proggy thrash. A killer debut from these guys, and I can't wait to hear more from them. Limited to five hundred copies.