Bestial Mockery - Christcrushing Hammerchainsaw

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[audio: BESTIALMOCKERY_BSS.mp3]
[audio: BESTIALMOCKERY_MI.mp3]

What’ll it be? Sex or the saw? Leatherface knew you don’t have to compromise, and so did Bestial Mockery, for whom the chainsaw served as totemic erection. Your stomach heaves. Life is sickening. Booze and drugs can’t help. Strike through the mask. Carve up the priest. “Warfuck!—Fucked with a Hellhorn!” Everything must get fucked.

This is a re-release of Bestial Mockery’s first full length, with new artwork by Chris Moyen. After this, Bestial Mockery would polish their art, adding experiments in melody and structure. “Primitive” bands often release one great album and then continually rehash it. But over the course of albums like Evoke the Desecrator (Osmose Productions, 2003) and Slaying the Life (Season of Mist, 2007), Bestial Mockery stayed inventive while preserving their edge. Nonetheless, as with much great metal, there’s something to be said for experiencing the band at its most raw.

This is particularly true of Bestial Mockery, who stink like cum and gasoline. Bass lines writhe. “Morbid Invertation” blasts and whines like a two-stroke engine, then slices into lecherous grooves. Tracks like “Bestial Satanic Sacrifice” and “Raise the Chalice” are mutilated punk rock, while “Chainsaw Inkarnated” is inexorable mid-tempo thrash. Master Motorsåg howls like the mental patient he apparently was, spitting out chants like “No remorse / Bleed and die / No remorse / Bleed on God’s lie.” The instrumentation is skillful, but it emphasizes strife, not technique.

Then there’s the chainsaw thing — totally juvenile, the official fantasy weapon of teenage boyhood. Bestial Mockery slap chainsaws everywhere, like a high school brain doctor filling space in his math notebook. It’s important. The reason why so much great metal is made by teenagers is because that’s the age at which Westerners are at their most unsettled. Grown-ups can be complacent; adolescents attack for the hell of it. The desire to undermine everything — and take nothing for granted — is worth preserving. It’s an important component of being a rational person, and it’s easy to forget. Bestial Mockery remind you of the value of breaking glass, and that’s a great achievement.

Amazon (CD)
Hells Headbangers (LP)
Hells Headbangers (CD)