No Mercy Shown

There is a certain trend among the young bands who try to sound like the pioneers of black metal from 80's-early 90's, though in most cases they fail to reproduce the spirit and the atmosphere of those archaic times and they aren't as good as the fathers of the genre. Thorn Laceration Records seems to be interested in such bands, as can be seen from some of this label's releases; some time ago I've reviewed Demonic Cremator from Scotland, and the subject of the current review is the debut demo of the band called Black Pentagram Cult hailing from Texas, which was released on tape by the aforementioned label.

"No Mercy Shown" (by the way, the title may suggest the "fulfillment" of Slayer's testament "Show No Mercy", at least Slayer is one of BPC's influences) consists of the 7 tracks, two of which are indistinct and pointless keyboard intro and outro, another two are the covers of Bathory and Sodom that sound very poor comparing to the originals, so the remaining three tracks make up the core of this demo. For the most part, these tracks remind of the early 90's black metal classics, although there's a lot of 80's thrash riffs. The riffs aren't bad and you can easily headbang to them, but they're too unoriginal, so it often seems that you've already heard it many times before. There are also some solos thrown here and there, and they create some additional 80's feel. The singer tries to make some "evil" screeches, well, maybe they sound not evil enough and often do not stick to the music, but they are OK. But the worst thing on this demo is the drums. Actually I can't say much about the drums, because each time I try to listen to them carefully it makes me want to sleep, it looks like the drummer just plays some random stuff that doesn't stick to the music at all.

So, Black Pentagram Cult is one of those bands that try but fail, though this demo isn't entirely bad and many metalheads may find some enjoyable moments here. I would say that "Fullmoon Fistfuck" is the best song here, but it's far from being perfect. First of all, the band needs more energy, more brutality and more originality, and also a decent drummer would help a lot.