Reviews list for Blasfemia - Guerra total (1988)

This relatively underground late 80's release offers some very raw Colombian black metal that draws influence from Parabellum, early Bathory & "In The Sign Of Evil" era Sodom. I seem to recall receiving this & fellow Colombians Parabellum's "Sacrilegio" E.P. on the same side of a cassette from a Peruvian tape trader way back in the day. Neither release did much for me if I'm honest but if pushed I'd suggest that I have a slight preference for the insanity-ridden Parabellum sound. Interestingly, Blasfemia share some band members with Parabellum & if you like "Sacrilegio" then you'll probably dig "Guerra total" as well.

Two of the four songs presented on "Guerra total" are really pretty good & those inevitably line up with the moments when the band can keep their shit together (see " Presagio" & "Más allá de la ignorancia"). The other two songs show promise but end up falling in a bit of a heap due to the band's technical & compositional limitations. The band can't play for shit obviously but that's par for the course with early South American extreme metal. I really love the Quorthon style vocals on three of the four tracks. They're evil as fuck & suit the primitive nature of the instrumentation beautifully. The other track "Postmortem" has more of a blackened thrash sound than the rest of the material which is pure black metal.  

It's so easy to hear where a band like Mayhem may have pulled the pieces of their genre-defining second wave black metal sound from when you hear a release like this as all the ingredients are already there, only they're presented in a much cruder format. The hardcore influenced sections are invariably the most relevant & over the years I've built a strong opinion that hardcore punk was the critical element in the creation of the modern black metal sound. I don't think the South Americans get enough credit for the role they played in that regard to be honest but that doesn't immediately mean that I have to like their music.