Review by Sonny for Sardonic Witchery - Barbaric Evil Power (2024)

Sardonic Witchery is a solo project of Portugal's King Demogorgon (Ricardo Mota) who used to be one half of black metal duo Infernal Kingdom. After a, frankly awful, intro, King drops the hammer on some reasonable blasting black metal with riffs that sometimes fly close enough to traditional metal that they almost come over as black 'n' roll. He has quite an acerbically harsh, roaring style of singing that comes across more as angry than evil at least until Merciless Warrior of Steel when he just sounds hokey as he tries to pull off some kind of Tom G Warrior-like "death grunts".

The production of the album is good, with the bass lines being nicely presented and boosting the riffs well, although the snares are pushed forward and get a little bit annoying after a while. There's not really a whole lot more to say, this is a decent enough piece of black metal that is best when it's blasting hardest, but which is also prone to fly close to black 'n' roll grooviness with trad metal influence shining through and some inherent cheesiness. As such it treads familiar ground, albeit mostly with professional aplomb. There aren't really enough stand-out moments that will keep you wanting to respin this, with the duo of Barbaric Bastards of Mass Destruction and Horizon's End being the section that meritted most attention from me and had me wishing the quality of those two tracks was reproduced throughout the album's almost forty minutes rather than being confined to a mere ten. So, ultimately I guess, it will end up on the pile of releases of the year marked "solid if somewhat unremarkable black metal" - and I am sure it won't be the last.