Review: Charisma Rat – ISAR (Full EP, 2024) | Black metal

https://youtu.be/1dD64MmkzN0

Band info

Band: Charisma Rat

Album: ISARĀ 

Released: October 16th, 2024

Genre: raw black metal

Location: US

Review

Charisma Rat is a Baltimore-based project from the so-called United States. It has a very impressive discography for a project formed in 2017 (or at least from this year, which is the first episode). These are all very interesting works, and we encourage you to check out the artist’s earlier material, but today we will focus on the newly released album ‘ISAR‘. Before I get to the content of the album and its message, a few words about the music itself. It is ferociously raw black metal with very interesting elements of other genres. So we have some punk and some psychedelic rock. There are acoustic moments and changes of tempo from frenetic to merely moving, and there are moments of heavily modulated guitars, all complemented by hellish vocals. If someone likes intriguing rawness with interesting elements and a diabolical ambience, I definitely recommend this album.

Now let’s take a look at the cover. It’s not some vampire or someone with stylized corpse paint, but someone completely uncool, and fortunately, unlike vampires, he won’t get up again. This is Wilhelm Keitel, commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, and the photo shows him in 1946 after the Nuremberg trials and the capital punishment carried out on him. It should be noted that Willy was an exceptional scum, you will find nothing positive about him, only the very testimonies of the weakness and submissiveness of his character- he was described by many as Hitler’s yes-man and other nazis called him ‘Laketitel’ from a term ‘lackey” and his name. A careerist, a member of the military elite, who for a career was not only simply a scumbag, but also personally responsible for the Nazi death machine and the suffering of millions. The entire album, in a grotesque and demonic way, is a concept album about revenge against Nazi criminals after the end of World War II, and there is a quotation from the movie Inglourious Bastards about the fear and terror that the titular unit will evoke in the Nazis. The ‘ISAR‘ is a river in Austria where the remains of the Munich Synanoga, which Hitler ordered destroyed in 1938, were found quite recently.

The themes are current as can be, we have quite a few diabolic dictators supported by the corrupt elites in the world and several ongoing genocides including the one in Palestine.

Other links and platforms:

BC: https://charismarat1.bandcamp.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/charisma_rat/