HUMAN AGONY – PUTRESCENCE OF CALVARY LP (Invictus Productions / Final Agony Records)

Here’s half an hour of hellish bestial blasphemy to make your fucked-up day and life a little more bearable. Towards the dying embers of 2019 anno bastardo, merciless Canadian antichrists Human Agony dropped their devastating, debauched debut full-length offering, ‘Putrescence Of Calvary’, upon the unsuspecting sheep and shits of the planet.

Things have never been quite the same since, for whatever reason. I’ll leave it to future generations to determine the extent to which this record has been responsible for the total collapse of civilisation but, regardless of what those tribunals – fixed, no doubt – might decide, its impact within the confines of my own cave has been substantial.

It’s not difficult to describe Human Agony’s music, which suits me fine. Suffice to say that if you want to hear something even remotely palatable or accessible, then you should look elsewhere. Or preferably die. We’re in the realms of blistering bestial Black / Death here, where behemoths like Revenge, Conqueror and Blasphemy rule the land alongside their obscene, far-flung offspring Diocletian and Witchrist not to forget the newest ugly generation of Christ-crushing barbarians Tetragrammacide and Nyogthaeblisz and their ilk.

Heralding chaos and havoc, there’s no tolerance in the Human Agony arsenal and nor should there be, considering how worthy of scorn the lying putrescence of Calvary in the album title was, the grovelling gypsy whose silly magic tricks and foolish claims to greatness led to a humiliating and thoroughly deserved public death. The followers even worse.

This is a relentless blitzkrieg of high-intensity, ferocious fury aimed at your jugular, your face, your balls. Depraved and uncompromising, with riffs ripping through flesh like shards of glass, drums pounding the subservient into submission, vitriolic vocals (varied; always diabolical) spitting inhuman venom and contempt in all directions… the only logical reaction to this cursed existence. Damn it all to hell. Let the torment begin, nay continue.

Evilometer: 555/666