(written by Islander)
At the end of this week, on June 26th, Time To Kill Records will release Filth Majesty, the debut album of the Finnish band Hoc Est Bellum. That name means This Is War, and as a sign of what their music sounds like, it is absolutely accurate. As you know, we prefer to use our own words in describing the music we recommend, but this is one occasion where the promotional materials hit the nail on the head:
Based between Helsinki and Turku, the power trio unleashes a savage blend of grinding and bestial black/death chaos, channeling a sound that is both primitive and devastatingly direct. Their music thrives on raw aggression and ritualistic intensity, forged in an atmosphere of apocalyptic dread, satanic hostility and visions of mankind’s imminent extinction….
Conceived as an act of ruthless sonic warfare, Filth Majesty descends with the force of dive bombers cutting through the sky, unleashing wave after wave of black-death devastation. Each track hits like a strafing run, relentless and unyielding, carving through silence with bursts of violence and scorched intensity.
That’s probably all you need to know in deciding whether to subjugate yourself to the full-album stream we’re presenting today, but of course, for better or worse, we have our own thoughts about the album to share — and later on in this article we’ll share an extensive statement by the band as well.
Hoc Est Bellum don’t immediately commence their sonic warfare. They begin instead with an intro piece called “The Desolator“, but in no way does it provide an easy entrance into what’s about to happen. It’s an ominous and unsettling experience, in part because demons seem to be screaming in the distance behind increasingly nightmarish frequencies.
And then, with a quick cymbal countdown, the band go to war, moving right into “Deify, Degenerate“. It has its own intro — a heaving, searing, and battering experience — and then with another quick countdown the pace accelerates, the drums go wild, the bass thunders, the riffing both blisters and dismally writhes, and unhinged screams discharge their fanatical fury.
The guitar tone is, as promised, majestically filthy, but it’s intertwined with other tones that are sharp and piercing, and even as dense and destructive as the riffing is, those writhing movements come through as well. Bestial roars trade off with the berserk shrieks. The hammering drums shift patterns repeatedly. The bass sounds like rolling thunder.
The following track is “Black Metal Terror“, and it is indeed a terrorizing assault. It sounds like a phalanx of artillery firing and massed sandblasters ruthlessly scouring everything before them. Yet once again, the guitars generate other sensations — sounds of madness and agony and the throbbing of open veins. The vocal tandem is again horrifying.
“Black Metal Terror” is a compact track, and most of the following tracks are too, sometimes coming across like black metal grindcore. Like the first two songs, most of the rest are also both humongously heavy and viciously abrasive. They often hit hard enough to punch through battlements but also race like mechanized armaments going flat out. They sometimes include enormous ritual-like beats but also (as at the end of “Vomit Black Ecstasy“) freaked-out soloing delirium.
Despite the relatively compact nature of most of the songs, Hoc Est Bellum pack a lot into them, changing speeds and drum progressions (many of which are blazing fast), and changing emotional qualities as well (though most of them are ruinous). In “Blood of the VVytches” (one of the longer songs) they also use organ keys to create a witchy aura, and that frighteningly, unearthly atmosphere continues to blanket the music overhead even after the band start ferociously surging.
In that song, which functions as a kind of mid-album step away from warfare, the music also morbidly heaves and stomps, and eerily ringing reverberations coupled with ghostly gasps ensure that it will put chills down a listener’s spine before it ends.
The album’s second half (the last five songs) doesn’t let down on the quality or the intensity or the immensity established in the first half. The music remains exhilarating — caustic, violent, bone-smashing, and vocally monstrous — but continues to include dynamic shifts, such as the slowly slithering (and emotionally hopeless) melody that emerges in “Serpent of the Black Pit” before the song explodes in a mad maelstrom of destruction, and the foul rutting sensations, blaring agonies, and gagging/gurgling vocal extremity of the mostly mid-paced “Beast Ejaculate“.
On the other end of “Beast Ejaculate” there’s an album outro piece — “Spiral of Sodomy“, just a reminder that Hoc Est Bellum always have one foot firmly planted in Hell.
So, those are some of our thoughts about a hellishly good album, which we now present for you in full:
And now, here’s the extensive statement of Hoc Est Bellum that we promised up above:
“Filth Majesty is the culmination of years of barbaric sodomy rites and bestial incantations. The writing goes as far back as 2018, when the first riffs and bits of lyrics were conceived, up until the recording sessions in 2025. Our aim was to create chaotic, barbaric noise-commando “DESTROY EVERYTHING”-caliber grime and grind it through the feeble minds that have tainted and degraded the black metal scene for so long. An all-encompassing assault in the spirit of Conqueror, Profanatica and Beherit, the ultimate sacrificial offering for the old black gods. The album draws influences from all sorts of sources, ranging from the grindier aspects of songs like “Passion of the Antichrist” to the ritualistic haze of “Blood of the VVytches”.
“We recorded the album over three days in April 2025 at Waiting Room Recording Studio in Tampere. Drums, bass and rhythm guitars were tracked live, with us blasting our instruments in the same room to truly capture the chaotic nature of the songs. Vocals and additional guitars were recorded separately on top of the live backing tracks. The intro and outro noise/ambience were also created during that same weekend at the studio, so the process could remain as spontaneous as possible, carrying a certain sense of urgency.
“Vicious and barbaric were the key themes behind the guitar and bass sounds. For reasons beyond our understanding, we ended up using the infamous Boss Metal Zone combined with various classic overdrives as the sonic foundation. Such a disgusting pedal and distortion. Not for wimps, and the guitar tone was barely under control.
“The recording and mixing were handled by Mikael Neves of Waiting Room Studio. He managed to bring the right amount of dirt to the production while also keeping everything audible so the album could achieve maximum impact. The album was then mastered by Dan Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studio. We asked him to make the final result sound like it wanted to assault the listener, with transitions between songs feeling relentless. He definitely delivered, as the end result is merciless and filthy indeed.
“For the album art, we turned to the same gentleman who had previously created our logo and one t-shirt design for us: K, known for his work with bands such as Oksennus, Lucubration and Sulfuric Acid Mist. He creates art under the moniker Kakografia. K has a truly unique and distinctive style which we deeply appreciate. We gave him free rein to manifest whatever arose from the lyrics, music and album title. He came up with this epic yet dark artwork, which we feel stands out boldly among the usual bestial black metal / war metal cover art.
“With a steel toe boot and an iron will, Filth Majesty penetrates the battleground like a hailstorm of pure full metal jacket sonic heresy. In the name of the great horned one, fueled by misanthropic berserking fury, the battle is eternal. Put your own gas mask on before others, and never relent before this piece of intolerant mastery.”
Time To Kill will release Filth Majesty on LP, CD, MC, and Digital formats. For more info, and to order the album, visit the locations linked below.
PRE-ORDER:
https://timetokillrecords.com/collections/hoc-est-bellum
https://hocestbellum.bandcamp.com/album/filth-majesty
HOC EST BELLUM:
https://hocestbellum.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/hoc_est_bellum_black_noise
TIME TO KILL RECORDS:
https://timetokillrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/timetokillrecords/
https://www.facebook.com/timetokillrecords/