Release Date July 23rd, 2026
Format CD
Genre Black Metal
Origin Belgium
Pox emerged in Flanders in 2014 and has spent more than a decade in a deliberately narrow corner of the black metal underground. Traditional first wave and second wave traits sit at its core commonly locked into hypnotic mid tempos and pierced by feral punk momentum. The band’s subjects draw on northwestern European folklore, pre Christian archetypes, heathen belief, plague, and regional disease history, areas that meet in tales of dread, decay, punishment, and inherited fear.
Live activity has remained selective, and the release history has arrived in small doses, reinforcing the private character surrounding the band. Numerous lineup shifts have passed through Pox, while anonymity places the music ahead of individual names and faces. Megiddo, the source of the closing cover, formed in Canada in 1998 and built its name on elemental black metal steeped in Satanism, blasphemy, apocalypse, and death. Its 2000 album, "The Devil And The Whore," included "Blackened (The Circle Complete)," the song Pox revisits on this EP.
":BKW: (Brass Knuckle Witchcraft)" gathers four original songs composed at different points in Pox’s history, then closes with the Megiddo cover, totaling five songs across about twenty four minutes. Issued on CD by Void Wanderer Productions, the EP uses a raw, skeletal production, guitars scratch and churn, drums strike with a blunt punk pulse, bass remains buried low, and the voice arrives as a scorched howl.
The mid tempo pacing creates a grim march, while sudden accelerations tear open the songs before they settle into monotony; the narrow tempo range occasionally makes the central section drag. Several riffs trade melody for blunt, circular figures and the drum attack prevents those figures from sinking into a lifeless stomp; the punk current is essential, since much of the motion comes from its impatient rhythm.
There is no studio gloss to hide behind, and the stripped arrangement exposes every riff, transition, and vocal entry, so a plain turn remains plainly visible. "Luycifers Kagie Ende Helscaps Clove," "To Greifswald!," "The Flagellants’ Howling," and "Pox (BKW)" share enough rhythmic and tonal DNA to form one compact unit; small changes in speed and riff shape give each song a separate contour, and the lyrical territory links folklore, flagellation, disease, and old regional dread with genuine substance.
Pox’s version of "Blackened (The Circle Complete)" belongs at the end, honoring the Canadian song’s primitive shape while bringing the punk abrasion closer to the surface. The chosen method sometimes boxes the EP into a confined shape, especially when the churn circles too long; compact, mean, and free of excess, the release contains enough variation to prevent that method from wearing thin, and the final note leaves a bruise, not a blur.
|7.5
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