Release Date September 25th, 2026
Format CD/LP
Genre Black/Thrash Metal
Origin Austria
Ludgar formed in Linz, Austria, in 2024. The name is short for Loup de Guerre, meaning "war wolf" in French, one of the biggest trebuchets used in medieval sieges. The members come from other Austrian acts. S. Bruckner plays guitar in Death Racer and handles the bass here, J. Steidl is the drummer from Venator, and S. Bolda, who also plays in Zepter, is on guitars. L. Höller is on vocals. A demo, "Molochian Rites", appeared in 2024, and "Violent Visions" is the first full length, issued by Dying Victims Productions on CD and vinyl with artwork by J. Huemer.
The sound of "Violent Visions" is ragged and cavernous, and the production commits to it. Bolda's guitars scrape along at a relentless pace over Steidl's drums, Bruckner's bass fills the low end, and Höller's vocals sound torn up and possessed. The nearest neighbours are Desaster of the "Hellfire's Dominion" era, Witching Hour and Hellish Crossfire, with a darker and more lawless streak running under the speed. Calling it blackthrash misses the point, since the usual tropes of that style are absent and the unholy atmosphere does as much work as the riffs.
The riffs are fast and vicious, yet the pace rarely changes gear and hooks are scarce, so a few tracks blur into each other because atmosphere gets the priority every time. The imagery of siege machines, dungeons and rites ties the band name, the demo title and the album title together, and the album holds up as one dark run. Menace is the calling card, and the songs stay inside a narrow lane. A good debut, short on hooks and long on menace.
|7.0
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