They say to never judge a book by its cover, and if there was ever a project to prove that maxim correct, it'd be Puerto Rican one-man act Plaga Negra. Everything about the presentation of their Bandcamp page suggests it's just another shitty joke band with no other purpose than to clog up the site, and if not for some people recommending their demo, I would never have bothered. Well, I'm rather glad they did, because color me impressed, this is some killer shit.

Sole member Dave has been releasing tracks on Newgrounds, of all places, for a while, but this appears to be entirely separate from all that. While those worked in a more US Power Metal vein, Plaga Negra are all about dirty, low-fi old-school Metal in the vein of Motörhead and Venom with bouncy riffing, snarled vocals, and plenty of punky attitude to spare, but there's also plenty of sharp melodic work not too dissimilar from underground acts like Omen and Liege Lord that help give this more identity. The compositions are chaotic, the playing can get sloppy, and the super rough production lives up to the claim of being "recorded on a toaster and held together with duct tape and semen", but those are all selling points in my book. The trick to making something this defiantly old-fashioned and underground is to go at it the same way many of the classic bands did: no pretension, no frills, just a hunger to make badass music regardless of how limited your resources are or how unrefined your playing is. Plaga Negra have that down in spades, and that's reason enough to give this demo your time.