Artist: Babylonian War Chant
Country: USA
Label: Self-Released
Formats: Digital EP
Year: 2025
Although the all-knowing algorithms tend to taunt me with their suggestions of bands that I don’t give a dime about, sometimes they bring up something rather interesting. Such as this latest EP by the American one-man Black Metal band Babylonian War Chant. Honestly, I totally forgot about this project and felt stupid I didn’t catch up with anything after its solid debut full-length from 2021. But, it turns out that ‘The Spirit Of The Ancient Warrior’ is the successor of that debut album, the project seemingly laid dormant for a good couple of years. But, still, if not for Bandcamp’s suggestion, I might have missed out on this one. So, just this once: thank you.
This project debuted with two EP’s in 2020 that brought a rather meaty sort of Raw Black Metal, but with the subsequent and aforementioned full-length, ‘Kill The Assyrian’ (2021) the project seemingly took a new direction. At least musically. The beefier production and overall sound went overboard and was traded for a significantly more harsh approach. With its dissonant nature and reduced predictability, the album is considerably less accessible. That trend has been continued on this latest offering.
Not only has the project continued going down that path of a rawer take on the Black Metal genre, it has actually intensified it. ‘The Spirit Of The Ancient Warrior’ has its predecessor as its firm basis, but with an even stronger use of dissonance and repetitive patterns, the music took another step in inaccessibility. It even take bigger forms towards the end of the EP, with the last track being a downright tough one to swallow. Slightly punky or garage-like simplicity in rhythms, endless repetition of riffs and hardly audible vocals… it is not quite the easiest bit of music I came across this year.
Although I can see the beauty in the ugliest and most insurmountable harshness and I usually even prefer the rawest recordings of bands for it usually contains the purest of energy, I am not 100% convinced by the direction Babylonian War Chant is going. For now, I think I prefer the band’s first two EP’s.
