| Vengeance War ’Till Death |

Metal’s obsession with war has given us some of the most thrilling moments in the genre’s history, but few bands have nailed the extremity and horror of armed conflict with more vivid hostility than Australia’s Bestial Warlust. Released in 1994, the band’s feral debut may not have been the first to be described as ‘war metal’, but it was the one that truly defined that nascent subgenre. Grim, lightning-speed black metal, imbued with deathly heft and a flagrant disregard for sonic niceties, the likes of Dweller Of The Bottomless Pit and Storming Vengeance paved the way for the wave of blitzkrieg necro-brutality that swiftly followed and that has seldom slowed since.