Review by Sonny for Wampyric Rites - The Eternal Melancholy of the Wampyre (2021)

Wampyric Rites are an Ecuadorian black metal three-piece formed in 2019 who are associated with the Pure Raw Underground Black Metal Plague circle that encompasses a number of black metal outfits from Latin America. Following a bewildering number of EPs, demos and split releases, The Eternal Melancholy of the Wampyre is their debut full-length album. This is raw, chaotic and uncompromising black metal with howls and screams for vocals that I hesitate to call evil-sounding as that is a much overused descriptor in black metal, but it certainly is aggressive and dark and calls on the spirit of the early second wave legends to be sure. At it's best when at it's most breakneck and chaotic, this is a quite impressive debut album.