Review: Kommando Baphomet – Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition

There’s not that many info to be found about the Portuguese band Kommando Baphomet, except for this band consisting of drummer/vocalist Vulturius, who also plays in various other bands, such as Decayed and Morte Incandescente, and guitarist/vocalist N.. They play black/death metal and released their debut album, titled Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition, via the Polish label Godz ov War Productions in November.

With the dark, hellish spoken word part album opener Blood Bible begins with, it immediately becomes quite clear that Kommando Baphomet does well in getting you in darker vibes quite fast, which perfectly fits this album. Soon heavily pummeling drums, deep grunts, with sometimes a higher scream, and heavy guitars are following.

That last thing, the guitars, are what stand out the most in a positive way on Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition. With that I mainly mean the regularly roaring guitars that can be heard in every track for some moments. To get an example of this, be sure to listen to Unholy Fires of Retribution and Living Hell. When those guitars aren’t roaring like that they mainly are sounding like a constantly sawing sound, such as in Caos Devorador and Impious Blackdeath Order of the Kommando Baphomet.

However, Kommando Baphomet doesn’t really convince me with Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition. Okay, those roaring guitars do sound great, the deep grunts, such as in Unholy Fires of Retribution and album closer A Thousand Corpses, are well-done, the terrifying screams, such as in Unholy Fires of Retribution do sound nice in quite a messy and echoing way, that fits very well with the filthy aspect of Kommando Baphomet’s music.

Why this album doesn’t really convince me though has to do with the quite boring basis of the tracks that makes almost all the tracks, with the exception of some details, interchangeable with each other, making this album in its entirety sounds quite monotonous. The only tracks that are somewhat better, but not much better, in terms of this are Living Hell and A Thousand Corpses. In addition to that, the production of this album is quite gritty, which creates a filthy, chaotic vibe that fits very well with the music of Kommando Baphomet, but due to that possible aspects that would reduce that monotony for a bit, can’t be standing out that clearly.

Do you listen to black metal and do you especially like listening to the filthy, raw produced part of black metal? Then be sure to check out Blood Gospels of Satanic Inquisition by the Portuguese black metallers of Kommando Baphomet. It isn’t my kind of thing, but it might be yours!