Let me start by saying that I'm glad I waited a bit to review this, because it has grown on me quite a bit since my first listen. While a long way from a black metal classic, this album is better than it sounds. The guitar sound on this disc is very thin, the drum machine is as annoying as possible, and just on the whole this is not a professional sounding recording. All that almost made me miss some decent metal.
Drum machines, being from Indonesia, and constant blast beats make Kekal the easy comparison for this band, but they're really far closer to Horde musically. Seriously, twice the blasts of Kekal, and a complete absence of real melody, keyboards, female vocals -- anything other than the most primitive black metal chaos -- make this the most extreme album I've ever heard. And while not overly creative, upon close listen there is some thought that went into making songs like "Seven Bowls of Wrath" and "Armageddon Holocaust" winners. Also, the frequent leads (courtesy of, I believe, Jeffray from Kekal) are completely chaotic and almost fun. Really, everything on this album is so ridiculously over the top that it will probably make you either shriek in horror or laugh out loud. Indeed, no subject matter other than Armageddon would be appropriate on this album.
All in all, if you're choosing between this and say, the new Kekal, get the latter and don't ever look back. If you're curious to see just how far the envelope can be pushed (and I KNOW you are) and have a few freakily cool tracks to convulse to along the way, this may be your ticket.
6.5/10
Other coverage for this album
Art for the Ears 2000Reviewed by Marco PovervestDestruction Metal is what they call it themselves. Armageddon Holocaust appears to be a project of the combined forces of the Dark Doktor (from Bealiah) and the Dark Thriller, both from Indonesia. What they've made is an extreme black metal piece consisting of twelve tracks describing the darker moments of human history yet to come. The production by Jefray Arwadi (from Kekal) is…Dead Zine 2000Reviewed by Orc-CleaverI had read a lot of Armageddon Holocaust reviews so I kind of knew what to expect when I got this. Besides Horde, there isn't a lot of good Christian black metal cds out there so I wanted to see how this measured up. "Apokalyptic Metal" is an accurate depiction of the music and lyrics. Very raw and nasty black metal in the vein of Dark Funeral, Horde and other old-school bands. Basically if you…Dead Zine 2000Reviewed by NecRoSarXThis is probably for the serious black metal fans only. And when I say "black metal", I mean the classic shrill, bombastic guitar-and-drum attack melded with the spooky black metal shriek typical of Horde and Kekal. Which means, if you're into the diversity and artistic neo-black metal that Extol and Vaakevandring craft, then you might get a bit bored with Armageddon Holocaust. Anyway, the…Dead Zine 2000Reviewed by D_ListerTHT Productions brings us a CD...finally. A full length CD in a pretty nice looking insert by an extremely extreme Black Metal band called Armageddon Holocaust. Production quality here is very low, ala Horde type, but the music is seriously cutting edge. Yes the face of Christian black metal is changing and it's bands like this that are forging ahead. 12 tracks of self proclaimed "Apokalyptic…Similar sounding releases
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