Review Summary: Watch out, here comes the Maltese first wave revival scene
Zabbeth isn’t anything new. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. Per its Bandcamp page, this album is intended as “pure Bathory worship”. The Bathory specifically in question is that seminal group’s 1984 self-titled debut, a massively influential record in first wave black metal and all that came after.
Zabbeth mimics the structure of
Bathory to a tee, with a short instrumental intro and a short instrumental outro bookending eight mostly fast-paced blackened thrash anthems. It’s all throat-shredding vox, razor riffs, and wild drumming. In short, it’s a great dose of hellish fun, without any chance of getting too repetitive, given a runtime which barely tops twenty-six minutes in total. While it’s all enjoyable, tunes like the relentless “Sacrifice The Bitch” and the doomy “Black Mass” are some of the best metal tunes to come our way in 2022. As a homage to a beloved act, it hits the mark easily. Seeing a one man band from Malta executing a near-perfect rendition of the early days of the forefathers of Scandinavian black metal wasn’t on my bingo card, but expect the unexpected.
