BLASPHMACHINE; it just sounds fun to say, doesn't it? This is a very underground Black Metal band who's album, "Salvation", sounds just as much like an underground band as you'd expect. Underground Black Metal seems to mean one thing; take BATHORY's self-titled album, put your own little twist on it, and call it a day. Raw, uninspired, Black Metal.

The album opens with "Temple of Desolation", a song which features the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus trend of songs, the drums aren't impressive, in the fact that they offer nothing new, and the guitars are just constant chords. "Malleus, Maleficarum" and "Heathen Fire" are a lot more of the same, although "Heathen Fire" does feature a spoken word section as its intro. Throughout the album, it's more and more of the same; unoriginal and rather boring. The most original sounding song on the album, "Into Damnation Eternal", is still a cover of BLACK WITCHERY and it's a painful listen to any fans of the band.

Underground Black Metal back in the day of "what's Black Metal" featured bands like BATHORY, BEHEMOTH, EMPEROR, MAYHEM, BURZUM. The list goes on and on, what they all did right was that they made the music their own, they didn't take someone else's work and copy it cut for cut. BLASPHMACHINE on the other hand, they sound like that's exactly what they did, if I wanted to listen to old Black Metal, I would go and listen to the bands that created it.

Bands take note; if you want to be taken seriously, if you want to make it in such a saturated industry, you need to come up with something new. No one wants to hear a horrid rip off of a band they like.<