The below album review was written for AreaDeath Productions’ release of Barbatos' 2015 full-length "Let's Fucking Die!" Posted on Metal Archives, the target audience for this review was metal music enthusiasts and potential consumers. Metal Archives is an online metal music resource that is considered by many to be The Holy Grail of all metal music-related information.
See original posting here.
If Cards Against Humanity, an adult Madd Libb-style card game, were a band, it'd be Barbatos. Hailing from Japan, Barbatos is your fundamental bare boned, profane metal outfit. With lyrics preaching crude, patriarchal notions of sex, acts of deviance and drinking merely to get fucked up, Barbatos is just as sacrilegious and absurd as you can get; just as blasphemous as Cards Against Humanity, and just as fun.
From the unfaithful girlfriend (“My Girlfriend with Other Guy”) to the idealized metal slut (“Metal Slut Fuck Me”), Barbatos’ mastermind Yasuyuki Suzuki on their latest Areadeath Productions release, Let’s Fucking Die!, bellows the barbaric war cry of all metal’s sausage-fest-card-holding, sex obsessed brethrens’ wet dreams. As a lyrical subject, women are only presented as means for sexual gratification or are demoted to the role of the scheming bitch (“Blonde Hair and Bitch”; “My Girlfriend with Other Guys”). As can be rationally assumed, women’s role with sex in Barbatos’ lyrics is merely being fuckable objects, and not an active participant. Sex is also lyrically expressed as a means of self-inflation and affirmation for ridiculous patriarchal notions of masculinity (“My Dick is Fucking Big”). Stigmatized ideas of women and pompous concepts of masculinity are not the only perverse subjects presented in Barbatos’ music, the ideology of being true (with a v?) and drinking yourself into a comatose state are also wailed about in songs like “Metal Hangover” and “Satanic Beer,” where drinking yourself into a black out, acting like an intoxicated deviant, and being an alcoholic are bluntly articulated and even encouraged. As such, beer is put on a golden pedestal in the frostiest, dirtiest pint glass ever. In the words of Yasuyuki Suzuki himself, “ Beer is so fantastic/ Beer is my medicine/ Metal Beer—this is what I like/Metal Beer—it tastes alright/ Beer is my Leader!” (“Beer is My Leader”). Beer is god.
Instrumentally speaking, Barbatos is a metal-punk hybrid that isn’t trying to reestablish anything or even distinguish itself from Yasuyuki Suzuki’s other musical projects, such as Abigail. This isn’t a harsh criticism of their unremarkable, indistinguishable-ness, it’s just merely stating the fact that they are just another one of Yasuyuki Suzuki awesome projects, and sounds like it too. Moreover, like Yasuyuki Suzuki’s other outfits, Barbatos’ generic raw, rudimentary aural discord would be a real treat live. However, the raw, rudimentary feel of Barbatos’ music doesn’t always translate well recorded, sometimes even sounding like an annoying, arrhythmic thudding in the background. As such, the dirty chaos that is Barbatos’ material is definitely suited for the live setting. With such obscene lyrical content and such primitive metal instrumentals, Barbatos’ material awakens the beer-guzzling, fist pumping sicko in all of us. So Drink on!