(written by Islander)
Near the end of last summer I came across a two-song debut EP named Subhuman Eschatology by the Polish band Wstręt. As I wrote at the time, it floored me. It was like someone spun the intensity dial until it wouldn’t go any further.
Those two songs warped together ingredients of black and death metal to create body-bruising blows and to inflict mind-shredding, needle-sharp riffing that dug in deep. The songs generated moods that were wrecking and wracked, terrorizing and tormented, exhilarating and oppressive, coupled with ragged, reverberating roars were heartless and harrowing.
Given the nature of that introduction to Wstręt, I found myself simultaneously frightened and thrilled to discover that Godz Ov War Productions would be releasing a second EP from them, this new one a 20-minute affair named Enlightened Misanthropy.
Now you’ll have a chance to form your own impressions about it through our full stream of these five new tracks in advance of the EP’s release tomorrow — though of course we have some impressions of our own to share first.
Of those five new tracks, the first is an Intro, a brief synth-led piece that creates a cold, supernatural, and haunting mood. And then comes the EP’s title song, in which Wstręt again deploy the kind of viciously needling dual-guitar fretwork that was such an insidiously charismatic factor in their first EP.
That harmonized two-tone riffing is berserk, and it feverishly squirms and shrieks as well as needles the nerves. As it hungrily burrows in, the drums ruthlessly pound; the bass vividly throbs; and the vocals vent hoarse and gruesome guttural growls and rabid screams. It’s all hellish, and it’s all fire.
From there Wstręt launch into “The Noble Light“, which in the main is slightly slower and generates a more sinister and supernatural atmosphere. The riffing is still deleterious, but often less freakishly bizarre than in the title song, and instead more miserable. At the start and at the finish, the song seems to menacingly lurch and lumber, but in between it kicks into hammering gear and lets the dual-guitar riffing run wild, like demons unchained.
“Ancient Hatred” is also variably paced, sometimes slower but also snapping into d-beat gallops. Of course, the rapidly sizzling and swarming guitars still seize most of the attention as they make insectile feeding-frenzy attacks, and as they writhe, roil, slash, and quiver — though the vocal horrors are a close second in grabbing attention.
Wstręt are really, really good not only at lighting listeners cranial nerves on fire and getting their muscles twitching, but also in their ability to create atmospheres of supernatural menace and infernal madness — and they do all that again with the EP’s closer, “Inexorable Terror“.
Again, they switch up the pace as they go, and switch up the riffing as well, creating sensations of oppressiveness and dismal desperation, of heartless cruelty and ecstatic insanity — and at the end they circle back and connect again with the Intro music that launched the whole affair.
Not surprisingly, the song’s lyrics are as hateful, as murderous, and as terrorizing as the music. Misanthropic indeed. Now please give yourselves over to the EP’s full stream (at the bottom of this post we have a Bandcamp player if you prefer to listen that way):
WSTRĘT Is:
Odivm • Vocals, Drums
Voiceless Tongue • Guitars, Bass
Enlightened Misanthropy was recorded at Sound of Records Studio in October 2025, and it was mixed and mastered by Haldor Grunberg (Satanic Audio). The cover art was created by Robert A. von Ritter, with layout by XXV The Sign.
Godz Ov War will release it tomorrow (January 30th) in a jewelcase CD edition with an 8-page booklet, in a Pro-tape edition with a 4-panel j-card (limited to 30 copies), and digitally. The CD and cassette editions include the two songs from that previous Wstręt EP, Subhuman Eschatology. The new EP is also accompanied by a limited run of shirts.
PRE-ORDER:
https://godzovwar.com/shop/en/
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/enlightened-misanthropy
WSTRĘT:
https://instagram.com/wstret.band
https://www.facebook.com/wstret.band