Catacumba are a black metal band from Brazil but unlike most black metal bands they don’t wear corpse paint (though they do have the ridiculously large spikes and wear a lot of leather) and they don’t use any keyboards. I’ve never been a big fan of black metal as I find it all to be a bit silly. I just can’t take grown men playing dress ups in the local forest seriously, nor I don’t find it to be very grim or kvlt. Having said that the material on Birkat Ha-Minin A Benção Dos Hereges is actually not that bad.

Like a lot of demos the production is pretty poor. My main problem isn’t so much the overall sound but the levels. The drums are way too loud and to top it off they sound pretty shit to begin with. The bass drum sounds like a punch from an old Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movie and the snare, which is much louder than anything else, sounds as if someone is hitting a milk crate with a stick. The vocals are of a typical black metal rasp with no real variation but the guitars come across well and there are some decent riffs. The songs have a strong Emperor vibe if they had cut to the chase and took away the keys and synths. Unfortunately, the songs do seem to drone on a bit and I find it hard to listen to a full song without wanting to skip to the next track and by skip to the next track I mean listen to something else entirely.

It’s not that this is a bad release and there are some moments that are quite good but for me to want to listen to black metal, it has to be absolutely brilliant and this isn’t quite there. If you’re into black metal then you’ll probably find something of interest and with better production they have the potential to be a decent act but if you’re only mildly interested then there’s nothing here that’s going to grab you by the balls and make you take note.

Written By: Rohan