By The Void

Blistering vortexes of riffs unfurl in a storm of hyper-masculine exultation. Deströyer 666’s 2016 album Wildfire is a prime demonstration of the power of rage-filled whiteness just barely contained under the surface of society. Wildfire is the type of album that should make every woman and person of color afraid because the unrestrained, almost eroticized aggression on display here is from the same atavistic impulse that brought us the major conflicts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The track Hymn to Dionysus is revealing. It begins with a trance-like melody and explodes into violence halfway. It is in this regard truly Dionysian – the passion-filled, emotional counterpart to more contemplative and measured black metal/speed metal hybrid bands. As it builds toward its ecstatic climax, it unleashes the orgasmic death impulse in the white spirit that finds the same validation in this music as it did in the plantations of the South, Operation Barbarossa, and the Bush War in Rhodesia.

The anti-intellectual musical colonialism of Deströyer 666’s Wildfire will appeal to its usual, narrow target audience. It is essentially speed metal played in a black metal style with a focus on its own technical prowess. It is hard to imagine this album — and indeed this band — appealing to anyone other than heterosexual white men.

Straight white male score: 3.5/5

The rest of the world score: 0.5/5