Vehemency Astaroth, a new band for me hailing from Australia, kicks off the split tape ”Reconquering Satanic Pride” with utterly raw and incoherent black metal that almost meets noise in all its chaos. Feedback, rough execution with the instrumens, quite interesting drum work every now and then, distant mid-range screaming. Basically, Astaroth does its thing laudably, but all the material seems to be lacking any real direction. Enjoyable rehearsal quality stuff, but would get better if more thought would have been put into the work - though I do understand that this was probably consciously made to sound unorganized and weird.

Vetala is often known for its improvisational style, resulting in total chaos, but compared to the previous act on side A, even Vetala sounds very focused. Starting with ”Descent...”, their sound is surprisingly bassful thought the second track ”Abusing the Children of Yahweh” is back again in raw rehearsal quality. Rapid blast beats, almost incomprehensible guitar and wicked screams and moans. Everything works quite nicely although I wouldn’t mind if the guitar tracks had a bit more volume. There’s a lack of any seriously brilliant material, but I’d lie if I said that Vetala wasn’t enjoyable to listen to. They certainly aren’t the easiest black metal band to digest due to the utterly noisy style, but a careful listen is rewarding.

All in all, ”Reconquering Satanic Pride” is a nice tape of rehearsal quality material from both participants, and these two bands definitely fit well on a split. Both deliver many rather long songs, so this isn’t just a little two-track EP of some garbage material. I am not excessively impressed but the chaotic atmosphere that both of the bands evoke is a pleasure to my ears. This one is limited to 100 handnumbered copies but I don’t think there’s too much hurry to get this as the listener base is quite minimal. Though it seems to be sold out from the label itself anyhow.