Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Bofo Kwo Review

Bofo Kwo – Legend of a Cannibal King (EP)
Review by: Jaime Perez 


Bofo Kwo is a trio from Helsinki, Finland who performs symphonic, black/dark metal. The band are members of the Sliptrick Records roster in Latvia, an independent label that has many interesting signings to brag about (check out the label’s website to see for yourself @ https://sliptrickrecords.com/ ) Some fans of Dimmu Borgir and many fans of Tiamat will likely find a place in their dark hearts for BK as they have “somewhat” followed the lead of the aforementioned, metal giants but have still managed to create an approach they can call their own. I say that Bofo Kwo have “somewhat” followed Dimmu’s and Tiamat’s styles because BK’s style is a little more straight-forward and less technical than Dimmu Borgir’s more varied and complex song structures and more like Tiamat’s “softer yet dark” approach. A couple of riffs per song is all BK uses to compose their tunes. This is not black metal of the Darkthrone or Satyricon variety, as the aforementioned bands have a much rawer and brutal sound; I don’t know if it’s the clean production or the musical approach (or both?), but this is almost hard rock/ heavy metal with black metal overtones, specifically the vocals and some of the blistering fast, programmed drum beats. I would understand if a Satyricon fan would see this as “not heavy or brutal enough,” but this still has many traditional black metal elements. In case you are wondering where the name comes from, each member of the band has an alter-ego; Bofo Kwo is the vocalist’s alter ego, whose actual name is Ted Egger. The trio consists of a two vocalists (one lead and one backing) and one bassist, which leads me to presume that the drums are of the programmed variety. Their most recent offering is an EP from 2017 titled, Legend of a Cannibal King, which contains 4 songs and an intro. This was submitted to me in mp3 format, so I don’t have any lyrics to follow along with while listening (yes, I still follow along since, as a lyricist myself, I find lyrics to still be important in metal.). A noteworthy mention regarding the lyrics is that they come from chapters of Ted Egger’s/ Bofo Kwo’s novel, also titled Bofo Kwo, who happens to be a cannibal king, hence the name of the EP, The Legend of the Cannibal King. Each song happens to incorporate a layer of keyboards/synths, but I am not sure if they are contributed by one of the three members (since the band’s label site doesn’t credit a keyboardist in the band line-up) or an additional, studio musician. The song “Son of Hatred” happens to add additional layers of vocal tones/sounds that add a haunting element to the track. I found this to be a little “different” for this dark genre of extreme music, but Bofo Kwo do justice to their approach. “Black Unicorn” continues with the hard rock-ish riffs and black metal vocals; again, this song has some female vocal/moaning-like vocal tones that remind me of what Dawn Crosby (R.I.P.) used to masterfully incorporate in her band, Fear of God, on their debut album. The two shortest songs are both just under the six-minute mark, and the other two songs exceed the seven-minute mark; so you are getting plenty of music in this EP. In addition, the production on this reminds me of some of the earlier recordings of Tiamat or Moonspell in terms of cleanliness, overall tone and musical approach. To sum it up, if members of Moonspell or Tiamat formed a band with Fenriz and/or Quorthon, the vocalists of Darkthrone and Bathory, respectively, you might get a band that is a little heavier than the average radio friendly metal band but less heavy than a band whose aim is all-out brutality, or you might get Bofo Kwo. If you are intrigued, you should be; seek it out on Spotify, Youtube, etc. ; you have nothing to lose.
(JP)
About Jaime Perez -
Jaime Perez is a founding member and drummer of McAllen Texas’ longest running death metal band, Severance. He has been a part of the Texas metal scene since the early ’80s and continues to be a global metal ambassador to this day. His music collection; both cds and vinyl, tallies in at roughly 1500 physical copies and includes a variety of musical genres, although a vast majority is metal. In addition to churning out metal, Jaime is also a fiction writer and author of “The Vacant Space” and the award-winning novels, “A Risky Yet Worthwhile Endeavor” and “Through You”.
For Media/Press, Republishing or Booking Inquiries Contact:
Twitter: @JPerezAuthor

 
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