Now, this is utterly, uncompromisingly filthy music. Poland’s Witchmaster are a band I had previously been ignorant of, but who have impressed me mightily with their unclean, unfriendly melange of raucous thrash and hoarse death. For those who have paid attention to my reviews recently, this immediately puts me in mind of Excoriate’s On Pestilent Winds (another album highly recommended for a fix of time-travelling aural molestation). Both bands capture an authentically grubby early-extreme metal sound comparable to Sepultura in their formative years. As if to confirm it, both also cover Seps songs… in this case Troops of Doom is convincingly bludgeoned.

But Witchmaster are also schooled in the more modern arts of dense and heavy black-death fusions, perhaps unsurprising given that Behemoth’s Inferno has played drums for them in the past. Despite what I’ve said in the first paragraph, this music isn’t really simplistic. Primitive, yes, but that’s not necessarily the same thing. The band tears through interest-holding songs that run the gamut between impressively unamused black metal shudderings and more carefree, energetic hard rocking thrash. It has to be said that the latter is particularly well served. Total Annihilation has heavy Venom, perhaps even heavier Motorhead overtones.

And that probably gives you a hint as to the best element of this album; it is damned catchy. Hateful, violent, misanthropic, crude, and damned catchy. It is played with obvious enthusiasm, particularly from new drummer Bastek, whose inventive rolls and fills add a strong sense of flair. Black Scum comes across as ferociously chantable punkish NWOBHM, and Two-Point Suicide crams as much fun as can conceivably be had into an almost Belphegor-like blackened death template.

So, Trucizna achieves the feat of melding an array of extreme metal angles onto a splendidly primitive base. The album is energetic and enjoyable, and as befits a band with a penchant for putting chained naked women in gasmasks on its album covers, it wallows gleefully in its own sense of twisted absurdity.