“The Smell of Leather Keeps Us Together”
– 'Psychotic Erotic'

The original Octagon was, of course, that bad-ass Ninja movie with Chuck Norris from 1980. It had the guy with the metal mask, who spit mouthfuls of razors at people. Crazy shit. This Octagon is pretty crazy too, being a no-fi American black metal band who eschew the usual devilry-do and crypto-fascism for sadomasochistic sex and torture. I guess that’s not a big stretch, but it is a refreshing change from all that relentless Viking-wannabe gunk, and the gonzo, shoot-the-hostages, black n’ roll approach to BM the Octagon takes here is pretty bracing, if not outright outrageous. Imagine “Welcome to Hell” era Venom, complete with Cronos’s witchy, Listerine gargling vox and Mantis’s mutated, demonic Chuck Berry riffs being mangled by some savage threshing machine from…well, from Hell, I suppose. Now imagine that sound being broadcast over a paper cup-and-string telephone. Now imagine this whole hoary mess as a pornographic nightmare of “Shit stained boots” and “Heartless cunts”. Got it? That’s this record. It’s a fucking pisser, man. Now, if the singer/guitarist/bass player dude, Mortigan, did not show off his Jack Skellington tattoo in the booklet, we’d have an awesomely sleazy, scary record on our hands. I guess we still do, but it kinda blows the whole torture killer image. Ah well. They’re young. Maybe they’ll get to that later. __________________________________________________

-Sleazegrinder