BLACK MASS PERVERTOR's highly anticipated new mini-album, Life Beyond the Walls of Flesh. Hailing from the infinitely fertile Finnish black metal underground, BLACK MASS PERVERTOR is one of that scene's best-kept secrets. Although their discography is sparse so far, the band's history stretches back to 1998; some demo recordings were circulated privately during the mid-2000s until their first public release, the One-Way Pleasure EP, saw release in 2007. Back then, the BLACK MASS PERVERTOR sound was crude and grinding; it was their long-awaited debut album, 2016's Phanerosis, where their aesthetic started to shape into being. That recording certainly retain some crudity from the early days, but saw the trio shape their filth into a finely honed war-machine. Now, with the successive Life Beyond the Walls of Flesh, filth and finesse reach a fever pitch. Bowing reverentially to their oft-overlooked forebears Belial, Barathrum, and especially early Impaled Nazarene whilst nodding to the early-Noughts work of Horna, Sargeist, and Behexen, BLACK MASS PERVERTOR create a veritable time-machine tornado of Finnish black metal history. Across seven deceptively catchy mini-anthems in a compact 20 minutes do the power-trio work their black magick, whipping forth a fury that nevertheless manages to evoke an atmosphere most sulfurous; indeed, not for nothing is a track like "Unorthodox Methods of Magick" titled the way it is. And yet, there's simultaneously a sense of Satanic glee here - you could call it "fun" - that fortunately manages to sidestep the cornier connotations of such a word.
