Kosmokrator - First Step Towards Supremacy album review

Belgian BM sceptics take a huge leap into the breach

Cover art for Kosmokrator's FIRST STEP TOWARDS SUPREMACY

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Only a band with either limitless confidence or a misguided sense of self-importance would choose First Step Towards Supremacy as the title for their debut EP. In the case of Kosmokrator, it’s certainly the former.

The enigmatic Belgian black/death nihilists declare their risk-taking nature the second Initiate Decimation begins; the sweet chime of a triangle gives way to a subsonic throat chant before Beherit-by-way-of-Bölzer savagery blitzes everything in its path. Focused on “a philosophy of moral scepticism”, the music is more tangible than the thematic foundations: double-bass blasts spread like famine, demonic death metal riffs stay the right side of histrionic, and the echoing screams and desperate chants/shouts provide a portentous punctuation mark during Death Worship and the chaos-chasm of Kosmokratoras III – Mother Whore. Kosmokrator have surpassed their 2014 demo and their future full-length could be championed just like Blood Incantation’s Starspawn was in 2016. The kosmos is theirs for the taking.