Holy Wars tear through an apocalyptic soundscape armed with just a love of frenzied metal on their new EP Cult Classic. Duo Kat Leon and Nicolas Perez offer up to the altar of their fans six daunting songs, each more sonically calamitous than the last. It serves as the follow-up to their explosive debut album Eat It Up Spit It Out and finds them rapturously embroiled in a head-banging inferno of sacrilege rock.
The EP opens with the wail of vintage horns — transmitted as if through a haunted gramophone — their lugubrious tones overlayed by a series of unnerving screams. Like the bloody beginning of a B-movie Holy Wars wastes no time in plunging you into the horror and mayhem that overflows from Cult Classic.
On its rip-roaring title track “Cult Classic” they thrust you through a gauntlet of volcanic riffs and madcap percussion. Hauling you on a breakneck tour of a smoldering cityscape: “Reclusive, shutter up the blinds,” Leon howls. “Sick world, you better stay inside.”
The track’s music video, directed by Deven Bussey, finds the band performing the song at an ominous but suave club. Surrounded by fellow metal fanatics, they give a barn burner of a set to the riotous crowd — with Leon giving a literal wild-eyed performance. The video also appears to pay a captivating homage to Salma Hayek’s vampiric role in “From Dusk till Dawn,” complete with stunning pyrotechnics and a sensually gory finale.
From there, Holy Wars sink their teeth into the rumbling hammer-ons that thunder from “Body//Temple,” exalting the power inherent to the physical while crumbling any notion of spiritual weakness. Then there’s the vicious rush that sprints through dueling guitars of “Deus Ex Machina” — Leon leaving behind wreckage as she unleashes a flurry of power-hungry affirmations.
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That lyrical and sonic vitriol reaches a fever pitch on “VenoM,” a track that momentarily lowers the tempo but not the temperature of their scorching rage. Every song on the EP is a ferocious delight to rock out to, but it’s already clear its penultimate song will be a fearsome favorite when they play it live. It all comes crashing down on the cinematic finale, “Tension//Release” — if there ever was a more appropriately bittersweet soundtrack of personal and cosmic armageddon — this is it.
Words: Steven Ward
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Listen to Cult Classic the new EP from Holy Wars below!
