I put this on expecting exactly what you’d expect from a new Nunslaughter record – fast riffs, blasphemy, a bit of chaos, maybe a couple songs I’d forget by the next morning 😉 New Nunslaughter always gets the first spin immediately. Been that way for years.
At this point Nunslaughter have been doing this for so long that you almost stop thinking about “new” records from them. They just exist. Another album shows up, Don of the Dead is still barking about Satan and desecration, and life goes on. But Satanic Chaos Legions actually feels sharper than I expected.
The first thing that hit me was how immediate it is. No dragging intros, no filler mood-building, no wasted space. The title track gets straight to work and by the time “Jesus Fucking Dies” kicked in I already knew this was going to stick better than I even thought. It’s got that stupidly simple hook that only Nunslaughter can get away with.
That’s always been their strength. Not complexity, not technical playing – just knowing when a riff is enough.
“Unsacrament” and “Peukharist” are probably the ones I kept coming back to most. Both have that old rotten feel, like something that could’ve fit on Goat without sounding out of place. Then “Cathedral of Stench” turned out to be the one I kept going back to most too. It drags more than the others, slower in parts, almost like it’s trying to crawl instead of run. Didn’t think that would be the one sticking in my head, but here we are.
Don sounds rough as hell on this thing. Maybe rougher than before. Works for me. Never wanted this band sounding sharp or polished anyway. Half the charm is that it feels like it could all fall apart if you pushed it too hard.
Same with the sound. Guitars are filthy, bass is buzzing underneath, drums cracking loud enough without taking over everything. You can hear what’s going on, but it still sounds dirty. That’s enough.
What I noticed after a couple spins was that nothing here feels mailed in. That’s the main thing. Plenty of old bands keep going because that’s what they’ve always done. This doesn’t feel like that. Feels like they were actually into it.
That’s usually what sticks with me anyway.
And yeah, it’s not Hell’s Unholy Fire. Didn’t expect it to be.
Still played it again!
https://nunslaughter.bandcamp.com/
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