Obviously this demo is going to cause some problems with the hippies out there, mainly because War88 are a *full* fledged NS/WP black metal band, the numbers in their name don't refer to the year "1988", and the large swastika which adorns this particular release is not only offensive to most, but also very blatant. For those of you whom have seen their flyers, you'll most likely get an idea of their political imagery, since the flyers contain such pictures as Panzer Tanks, and such lovely quotes as "Sieg Heil", and "No Jewish Rip-Offs". Now let's have a brief history lesson. War88 originally went by the name Lord of Evil. This was later changed to "War" to better symbolize the bands political and musical ideologies. To either further the controversy, or to prevent having to listen to millions of idiot's go "Hey, that Swedish band has the same name as you" when It/All/blah/etc release their War project later this year (which will say something like "Music written between 87-97" like all of those silly projects of theirs), the band added the symbolic "88". This demo (or collection of demos in new packaging) comprises the bands first demo, "Kill for Satan" (93), "Satans Soldiers" (94), and a 3 song rehearsal containing new tracks and entitled "Total War" (95). The band are a *Polish* band, even though head man nuclear resides in Northern Germany. They do make it very clear in their promo that they are strictly a Polish band. Musically, this is for all lovers of Polish and raw black metal. The music reminds me personally of Graveland's "In the Glare of Burning Churches" demo minus the heavy synth sections, but with the addition of impressive/original drumming (as well as a tad tighter sound). The vocals are in the traditional Polish style, but they contain a certain vile rawness that give them a personality of their own. There are various chilling (albeit very offensive) and obviously political intros/outros throughout the course of the demos as well. Although this will most likely piss just about every git on these groups off, the band uses various speeches/musical/chanting sections from Nazi propaganda/speeches. Horribly frightening, one outro is a brief Hitler speech, where he ends yelling "Sieg Heil" in unison with the huge crowd. The band echo the end of the "Sieg Heil" part as the volume slowly dies....it's ends up being very chilling sounding. Back to the music, it is again very impressive. Very polish in sound, the tracks are filled with huge and monumental riffs that are impressively filled with near disgusting amounts of distortion. Drumming is above average as well, and taking the song "The Priest of Unholy Star" as an example, also very original. The end of that song ends in a traditionally fascist style beat, with the drums moving as if they were leading an army, rather than a guitar. Vocally, the group add distortion here and there, and also let their manager (???) let loose with the vocals on one track. Production is raw of course (but not miserable sounding), especially on the rehearsal tracks which are difficult to make out with the wall of distortion. An impressive collection of demos. In the letter which came with the tapes, a new demo from 1998 has been promised (most likely recorded in March). I personally hope a label such as Isengard or Eternal Devils has the gut's to release a CD for this band, since they are impressive to us lover's of raw black metal. Also of note is that Nuclear has released a compilation of Polish NS bands (War88, old Lord of Evil tracks, Thorn, Hödur, and Nakahed) to please the masses. The compilation is called "Gotthenhafen Kommando Vol. I" and is available for $6.
The demo is in addition $6 and can be obtained from:

Arkadius Pieper
Schimmelreiterweg 24
22149 Hanburg
GERMANY

© 1997 brand