Doomsday Metal

Anal Vomit

Goat Semen

RetroSatan

ey whitey, it’s time to get out of Scandinavia! I’m here to bring you all up to speed on the Argentinian black metal scene, with all its bizarre lows and great, dark heights, from the beginning of time up until right now. Long story short, Argentina is a big country with a small population, located in the deep south of the South American continent. Like every country of this type, we’ve had the unemployment, the inflation, and the eventual coup d’etat. But we’re not here to talk about politics—come to think of it, maybe we are—so let’s start at the beginning of the dark ages, about 20 years ago. In tune and in time with the demise of Venom and the begging of NWOBHM, RetroSatan was formed in 1983 and played exactly what the times asked for: heavy metal with satanic lyrics. They only released one record and only existed long enough to be typecast as “the Argentinian equivalent of Mercyful Fate.” They also made a name for themselves for being one of the first bands to create a logo with bat wings. They’re mostly sold out, but keep checking www.ihate.se for their Grito Mortal LP, and lots of other weird shit. The eighties went by without leaving much to remember them by, but by the start of the nineties something wicked this way came… Sartan was formed in 1991 and have a discography consisting entirely of two awful demo tapes, but anyone who’s seen Sartan live will brag about it. They took the entire route, all the way from candles, satanic symbolism, corpse paint and obscure aliases all the way up to on stage, animal sacrifices. Not entirely vegan, but anyone who enjoys a rare steak was highly entertained. Sartan were also the first people to form a Satanic Militia in Argentina, our very own True Satanist Horde! Music-wise you should go for their second black metal project, Profecium, who confessed to “Satanic Socialism,” whatever that is, and released a nice little piece of a demo called Sathanas. In ’96 one of the best bands in the history of Argentina decided to crawl out of Satan’s womb—BAXAXA (not to be confused with the German Baxaxaxa)! The only sad thing about the band was that it was a practical joke. Recorded at the top of the BM hype, when everything labelled black metal would automatically sell, Baxaxa was a studio project by the guys running the tech as hell (and actually great) thrash metal band Vrede. Story goes Vrede had some extra studio time after they had recorded their second album, and they decided to go on a little satanic splurge. To their surprise the 500 copies of the Erscheinungen tape sold-out, without even one live gig. The tape is one of the most sought-after items on the local scene. One of our favourite characters from around the same time was Vivian Black. She was a part of a bunch of NWOBHM bands but re-emerged as born-again, fulltime Satanist after a conversation with Gene Simmons. For many years she was the only artist in Argentina who had around five videos out but not one single record. Vivian’s music wasn’t actually BM at all, and due to a declining

audience she played her last shows in ’99 topless. At one point a fan got on stage and beat her to pieces. She was last seen on TV, showing her Church of Satan identity card and saying, “The membership has its privileges.” Which brings us up to the present, and an Argentinian scene plagued by keyboard heavy, Cradle of Filth-sounding bands like Bagronk, who end up sounding like a gnarlier Deicide (they even use the same voice processing). Then there’s Daementia, who have great photos but who ought to spend more time actually trying to get sounds out of their instruments, and Grima Morstua, who are your best bet for dark and hateful southern BM. Go for the EP titled Repulsive Sounds of Satanic Worship. There’s also a decent one-man band called Bosipherius, a band that is fronted by Lord Bosipherius and sounds like it was recorded in a tiny, tiny bathroom. Blizzard is fronted by Halagaz, responsible for the Tormenting the Soul EP and then there are the many, many different solo projects by Eviigne. Eviigne is also the man behind the so-called Southern Elite Circle. This is a funny oxymoron in the form of South America’s own NSBM scene, consisting entirely of the four bands, Argenraza, Nachtgeblut, Ulfhethnar and Campo De Mayo, the last one is named after one of the bloodiest extermination camps during our last military regime in the seventies. All the bands deal with racial supremacy, Aryan pride and badly spelled Schopenhauer and Nietzsche interpretations, but Campo De Mayo remains the most musically challenged. The songs idolize the military regime with lyrics written in first grade type English, but Eviigne still claims to have sold out all his albums (they’re always released in 66, 777 or 999 copies). As much as I tried contacting Eviigne to get a comment on his agenda, it was impossible, and one of his websites claims, “The Empire will not answer any claims”. Maybe it’s better that way. The dark lord willing, I’ll be back soon with more info on the chaos that is blasting out of Colombia, Brazil and Peru right now (two of the greatest Peruvian warriors are pictured above). SAN CALORI