ATANAB, Black Magic (2010, Mighty Hordes Productions)
The skull:
Originally released by some other label in 2006 with a non-skull cover, Mighty Hordes put
that wrong to right and reissued this album with a skull cover. It’s a pretty okay one too, a
fairly crude drawing that is nonetheless effective. The skull is hooded, and the skull
is in rough shape: a vertical crack from forehead to nose, and a lower right eye
that shows the bone deteriorating in a kind of unzipping sort of pattern. There’s even a fuzzy-looking root or strand of fungus hanging off his left jaw. This skull has either been the victim of some pretty rad black magic, or he’s in bad need of some ASAP.
The music:
This Colombian band plays black metal that sounds like Marduk doing covers of ’80s era
speed/black/thrash metal bands. So yeah, it’s fast, the vocals are exclusively vicious, and
there are some riffs here, but there’s nothing remarkable about it. Perhaps I’m showing my
age when almost none of these newer skull-loving black/death/thrash metal bands sound impressive to these ears. Hardly any of them bring any sort of unique personality to their music — just retreads of recycled ideas of things that have been done many times before. Nothing stands out on Black Magic, but I guess when you’re calling your album Black Magic and slapping a skull on the cover, originality is not the idea.
— Friar Wagner