Review by Sonny for Amduscias - Amduscias (1998)

Amduscias were a Japanese black metal three-piece whose sole output is this sub-thirty minute album released in 1998, after which they split-up. To be honest, if you went into this blind, you would assume this was some undiscovered Scandinavian band as the sound is very much Scandinavian second wave black metal. The band formed in 1990 and sound so genuine that I would assume that they had excellent knowledge of the early Nineties' Norwegian scene. Nowadays of course, this is hardly earth-shattering stuff, the drums in particular being unremarkable and when stood next to classics like A Blaze..., De Mysteriis... and Burzum's debut it obviously falls short, but it is still a fairly enjoyable blast of old-school second wave BM from an area of the world that is under-represented in the genre. I don't know if these guys were ever responsible for setting fire to pagodas, but I wouldn't be at all surprised!