Band: Heretic
Title: Praising Satan – 15 Years Of Ultimate Satanic Sleaze
Label: Soulseller Records
Distribution: Sure Shot Worx / Plastic Head / Twilight
Release date: December 12th 2010
Review: compilation-CD

I guess I know almost ten bands with the name Heretic, yet one of the most interesting ones must be the Dutch Heretic, formed in 1995 in the region of North Brabant. In the beginning years, Heretic recorded a handful of demos, followed by the debut full length in 1999, Black Metal Holocaust. Damn, this was a killer-recording, bringing extreme and anti-Christian underground Black Metal from the Old School. After a short period of relative silence, Heretic returned in early 21st century with Devilworshipper, which was partly same-minded (lyrics, atmosphere and Hellhammer-basics), yet it turned towards a Rock’n’Roll approach. And then the band split up, at least for a while.
2008 saw the return of this Dutch horde and soon the band started recording the third album. The result, entitled Gods Over Humans, Slaves Under Satan, and which came out shortly after the release of a couple of splits (a full length with Dutch colleagues Bestial Summoning, and a 7” with German Capitis Damnare) and a live-album (a self-released and strictly limited CD-r, distributed for free, entitled Germaniacs), continued this Black’n’Roll-approach in its sleaziest sense. Two more splits followed (a limited 7” with Japanese barbarians Barbatos, and a CD, limited to 500 copies, released through Total Death Records, with Waffenträger Luzifers).

This compilation mainly consists of Heretic’s part of the split with Bestial Summoning, which is called Splitting Skulls For Satan. As a matter of fact, this split was collected out of songs that did appear on both former full lengths, Black Metal Holocaust and Devilworshipper. On top of this contribution on the compilation, there are some other interesting hymns present, among which songs taken from one-track splits (like the split with Capitis Damnare), and the previously unreleased Hellfire Satanist single (a track originally written for the debut album).
The opening tracks are taken, as mentioned above, from the Spitting …-split. They bring an up-tempo and rocking hybrid of Punk and Metal, somewhere between Hellhammer, Amebix and Warfare. With Unholy Rites amongst others, Bathory, Venom and Bulldozer come to mind as well.
Next are tracks that were recorded for different EP versions (different version from the ones on both full lengths), previously appearing on the full lengths. These ones too are combining sleazy (Black) Metal with energetic Punk and a nice portion of Doom’n’Roll, breathing sulphur, covered in spikes and leather, rough and crusty. Very interesting track amongst these is the previously unreleased song Hellfire Satanist, probably the most obscure and intensified Heretic-hymn to date.
Primitive, uncompromising and blaspheme Black’n’Doom’n’Thrash’n’Punk’n’Roll from the Old Skool… Ultimate Satanic Sleaze all right!
Duration: forty minutes.

--/100

Ivan Tibos.