Artist: Red Right Hand Of Plague
Country: USA
Label: Elf Eggs
Formats: 7″ EP
Year: 2025
After an interesting demo tape in Spring 2024, which unfortunately was too limited and hard to get for a European like me, this American one-man army scrambled together a few new songs. Yet, this time they are released on a 7” EP, also by the Elf Eggs label. With its 30 copies, the ‘His Womb’-demo was hard to get and I’m afraid it won’t be much different with the 50 copies of this 7”. But, fortunately, at least we can find the digital versions on streaming services…
With these cover art esthetics and the dots in between the words of the title it is not too hard to guess what you’re running into with Red Right Hand Of Plague – an interesting name taken from ‘Lost Paradise’ by Milton. Musically, however, there is pretty little poetic going on. It comes as a little surprise, but on ‘Descent.Parasite.Abominator’ there is quite a lot of Revenge-worshipping to enjoy.
Not like a mirror-image of the iconic Canadians, but Red Right Hand Of Plague definitely takes the same musical route and comes across pretty alike. Yet, the main difference is that this sounds way harsher when it comes to the Black Metal part. The grinding sound is highlighted mainly by the thunderous vocals and the relentless drumming, the guitars, however, do have a way more profound Raw Black Metal texture. Gritty and grainy with lots of that Punk spirit to it that typifies many bands of the past few years coming from that niche corner of the Black Metal genre. Together that blends into a very interesting take on the War/Bestial Black Metal sound. While it pummels as much as any of the unpolished and barbarous savagery of bands like Proclamation and Archgoat, it offers a significantly different overarching feel.
I am in no way averse to the more monotonous and standard scurrilous recipe, but it does make me a happy camper when I find out that there are bands that can bring something different, even within the narrow confines of this niche-in-a-niche genre.
