The unwilling eighty year-old prophet, a puppet harassed for decades by the cruel interventions of a wrathful and unpredictable God, had only just set out on a journey across the desert to free his people from a ruthless slaver when that very same God who sent him on said mission appeared through an assassin, a messenger of death to kill him for an unnamed reason. This unresolved fragmentary bit of Exodus 4:24-26 is one of perhaps thousands of cracks which show in the strange porcelain veneer of the long hand-mutated Bible, a bastard text which still has another couple of curveballs to throw within just a few more lines. The prophet’s wife, the daughter of a priest, instinctively performs a Midian blood ritual to fend off the assassin… which just so happens to involve crudely cutting the foreskin off of her (unspecified) son’s penis and wiping the bloody bits across the feet of the prophet. For hundreds of years, whenever folks felt safe enough to question the inanity of these events into context, this was explained away as a very simple message: “Do what God wants, or he will kill you.” wherein the typical Biblical teacher faced with making sense of this too bizarre to explain text the teacher and their lesson instinctively skip past any point of illogic or confusion and instead shrewdly questions the student’s path to piety: “Are you doing what God desires for you?” Though I am not sure if South Carolina/New York-based black metal trio Black Eucharist focus in on these events for the sake of an “in” towards highlighting the fantastical fucking nonsense of the Old Testament up front or if the visceral notion of foreskin blood getting slapped around between a family to protect them from God is simply hilarious in-scene but it all falls well into place on this particularly fine debut full-length album. ‘Inn of the Vaticide‘ speaks to hypocrisy, lunacy and the dementia of Judeo-Christendom with crude and riotous mockery in the grand tradition of prime United States black metal blasphemy, an exceptionally clear and cruel burst-fired attack upon the unthinking pious.

Black Eucharist appeared to be a less-than serious side-project when they formed circa 2018 under the name Black Ejaculate between three folks who’d variously started Blood Ouroboros and Demiser around the same time. Now, I say less serious only because those other groups began to flesh out with some priority over this similarly USBM afflicted sound first and they’ve since coughed up another band (Impest) in the meantime. Realizing the early potentiate of their sound, Iron Bonehead put out the group’s first demo (‘Cum Soaked Messiah‘, 2019) to some small notice thanks to face value reference of the ’91-’94 evolution of United States black metal by way of death metal’s outlier scenes, not only the legacies of folks like Paul Ledney (Havohej, Profanatica) but also Tchort (Lucifer’s Hammer, Masochist) with themes of highly sexualized blasphemy or anti-Christian sentiment as the main eye-catcher, a very important glimpse into black/death metal as it’d further developed underground in the United States during death metal’s brief reigning interest. Though I am tempted to write a few pages on ‘Drawing Down the Moon‘, ‘Dethrone the Son of God‘ and how they might relate to a record like ‘Black Sun Shall Rise‘ per the underrated Wind of the Black Mountains about a decade later the main point would be that we find some study and appreciation for all of those things in the work of ‘Inn of the Vaticide‘, which finds Black Eucharist meticulously performed and refined but still hammered-at with a brutal “ex-death metal” black metal spiritus.

Though the full listen eventually goes places in its digression down a certain path it’ll be worth noting up front that opener “Black Ejaculate” and the similarly riff driven gallop-and-crush push of “Deflowering Jerusalem” are rooted in thrashing death metal when whittled down to elemental structures. Of course this comes from a backwards-facing point of view since these folks are aiming for a specific era with some extremely sharp insight (read: taste) into what’d really girded USBM as its own thing in its “proto” stages. This doesn’t mean they’ve torn back to the skeletal ‘Profanatitas De Domonatia‘ (or, Ride For Revenge) style distorted bass blasted rhythmic burn or downtuned their gig to the Hell that is ‘Joined in Darkness‘ as this is much more clear, kicking at its blasted stomp and arranged in a sophisticated way that puts the riff front and center and the guitar tone beefed and loud. It more or less an approach which is in keeping with the style showcased on the demo while giving it four years worth of polish. While there are plenty of bands one could reference beyond the 90’s which I could reference here it’d be fair to leave it there with the suggestion that what Black Eucharist bring that is new and interesting beyond clarity offered by pro sound design and an entirely consistent rhythm section really does just boil down to strong riffcraft and a steady hand applied to classic work otherwise. The real impact of the album builds on Side A as a simply stated and straight forward black metal hammer.

Degrees of blasphemy are relative, I suppose. — The first thing any passerby should recognize beyond the name change and the upgraded quality of recording available to the band today is probably the lack of offensive and blasphemic imagery compared to the Black Ejaculate demo. References to cum and Satan don’t gurgle up as easily as one would expect from a band who’d put out a demo with cover art depicting a cum-drenched beheaded Christ with his own severed cock hanging out of his mouth. I mean, in a practical sense I get why an entity would pull back on that kind of thing when putting together a salable vinyl product for a niche market but it’d seemed like the band walked it back a bit for the sake of being taken a bit more serious. This is perhaps the only not-so circa 1992 shade upon the experience and most of that sentiment melts away after spending some time with the lyrics which are fittingly over the top to say the least.

On my end the ole ear-brain connection hadn’t perked up ’til the title track “Inn of the Vaticide” where the second half of the piece went off on its semi-melodic rant and added some coloration to the thus far havoc-toned rub of the record. A door was opened in some sense and beyond that point Side B takes on what I’d consider more of a Grand Belial’s Key inspired phrasing in terms of the wobbling groove of the rhythms and its turns taken. We don’t find the outright scaling melodicism of that group but rather the heavy metal inspired attack of the riff, especially on “Broken Staff of the Shepherd” where the main rhythm guitar thread is ruthless for the duration of its eight minutes but pronounced after the pace picks up around ~4:30 minutes in. This’d kept the album from landing as too self-similar throughout even if they’d done little to separate these pieces in terms of varying guitar tone and pacing. “Ziziphus Paliurus” is a clear choice for a highlight as well and again per the maze of the rhythms and the trilled groove at the heart of the rhythm, it’ll be the piece to make better sense of some of the references I’ve slopped at these folks work overall.

The real depth of this record hits within its second half and this’d been the main reason I’d ultimately considered it a grower. That isn’t to say that Black Eucharist don’t show you what they’re all about up front but that what develops along the way only becomes more engaging with its rhythmic interest. No question that “A Foul Stench Lingers at Peor” feels at least a few steps beyond the opening moments on the album in terms of its development even if they are grinding away at the same pulpit throughout. Seamless performances, wrathful attack, and even a few memorably set songs make this debut worth some considerable buzz for the USBM classicist who appreciates the death metal adjacency of the form while also hungering for an evolutionary event which isn’t saccharine, faux sentimental or forcedly raw. Though it isn’t anything entirely new for the traditionalist headspace it is an especially fine version, a lucid and approachably invigorated vision of blasphemic black metal aggression which is a crucifix-stuffing pleasure to sit (with) and spin on repeat. A moderately high recommendation.

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