Review by Saxy S for Antichrist Siege Machine - Vengeance of Eternal Fire (2024)

I am no expert when it comes to war metal. It's a style of music whose defining feature is not found within its instrumentation and performance, but rather the vocal themes. In that way, war metal has more in common with gothic and emo music than its similar North clan genre partners. Typically, I really enjoy these types of records, but I have reviewed a grand total of *checks notes* zero war metal albums before Antichrist Siege Machine's Vengeance of Eternal Fire. Not even Teitanblood has crossed my radar before this.

And according to other reviewers, Vengeance of Eternal Fire is not anywhere close to Teitanblood. This is much closer to the original War metal album experience. Short songs, unrelenting tremolo guitar and blast beats, and theme's of nihilism, death and the occult. You could be very well excused if you thought that Vengeance of Eternal Fire was a grindcore album.

Like with a lot of grindcore (which I also have not listened to very much of), the pure cacophony of the soundscape is very important and has the ability to rile up anybody's adrenaline. And Antichrist Siege Machine are fortunately able to do so with some decent production. The percussion is a little bit overwhelming, especially the snare drum, but overall, the blast beat formula is prominent, but not the focal point at any given time. 

The compositions, like with grindcore, are increasingly sporadic and unfiltered. The way in which songs can quickly swing between slow, almost doom riffs and percussion to ferocious black metal without so much as a warning is isolating. The record can barely finish what it has to say before carrying on to the next point of contention without ever giving listeners a definitive answer to the last statement/question. And with the album moving at such a frantic pace, none of the themes are allowed to really say anything. Either that or the sheer sound of the music is so overwhelming because everyone is shouting in your face at the same time demanding your attention. 

And I kind of get it: it's war metal. "It isn't supposed to be super in depth or philosophical. It's about fucking war! War is bad, it leaves nothing but death and destruction in its wake. What more needs to be said?" A valid point, but I kind of expect, even for as meat and potatoes of an album as Vengeance of Eternal Fire may be, that it has a little bit more to say than "Unga-Bunga caveman beat Oogle-Boogle caveman with stick."

Best Songs: Sisera, Prey Upon Them, Scalding Enmity