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This is so cult and true it leaves a residue in my CD player. To all those who have been trying to explain black metal to me: I get it now. And if this isn’t BM, I don’t know what the Hell it is. WOTBM are from Michigan, of all places, and this was the first full length release after the even more underground EP "Forcefed Into Blasphemy".

You can’t really say ‘they’ when discussing the band that recorded this album, as this is really a studio effort by one guy (Tchort) and some session players. (See Rules for Black Metal, rule #37) Some of the drums sound like a machine, and some sound real, it’s hard to tell, as the production here is charmingly iffy. The sound here is hard to describe, except this is deeply evil and twisted stuff. There are a lot of sound effects, from wolves howling to the female screaming in the background on "Black Goat". And the song structures are rather sprawling and atmospheric. There will be a driving guitar part (with a nicely sludgy, dirty sound) then an atmospheric keyboard passage, some spoken bits in what I can only term a necro-whisper, and then the full BM sound will crawl out again with twisted riffs and Tchort’s raspy scream. You’ll have to watch the track counter the first few times you listen to this to keep track of when the song has changed over, as it isn’t always obvious.

The CD comes in a jewel case (yayy!) with some rather cool cover art with a naked chick on it, and some reeeeeeeaaally bad interior art. Tchort gets cred for having his picture snapped sticking it to some chick bent over the drumkit, thus proving that he isn’t gay. (See rule #1) The other photos establish that he has the face-painting and acting like a troll part down (Rule #29) but needs to work on the woods part. Posturing in a barn with a goat skull looks like some twisted farmgirl sex fantasy. ("Mamma, Gene Simmons is at the chickens again!")

This is actually a very cool CD. While not as grim and hateful as, say, Darkthrone, it is much more varied and interesting. Sometimes I wish they’d lay off all the atmospherics and just play, but all the albums’ weird excesses just make it more underground, which is part of what makes it cool. The band does still exist, and is still recording, and I’m gonna have to pick up some of their later stuff, as "Sing Thou Unholy Servants" is a lot of fun.