POX – BKW: Black Knuckle Witchcraft (2026) – Review by Robert Mallett

A fair amount of Black Metal, or what passes for it, has a grandiose, frozen forest mysticism about it. This is especially true if you veer into the more commercial end of the genre, with bands who overthink their recordings, headline big Metal festivals, and record in plush, expensive studios. This is all fine if you are an all-rounder in the Metal world, or kid yourself that you’re really a part of the Cult of Black Metal, when in reality you are actually a bit of a wanker.

Because Black Metal has no real origins in pomposity or pretentious music and ideas. Hell no. Artists like Bathory, the first wave of Norwegian and Finnish Black Metal, were never solely influenced by Mercyful Fate, Venom, and Hellhammer but equally driven by punk’s aggressive, street-smart aesthetic. Just listen to Mayhem’s Necrolust, Darkthrone’s Where Cold Winds Blow or even Beherit’s chaotic Messe des Morts and you are left in no doubt where the roots lie. They are much more connected to the London Marquee Club in 1977 than any pompous later Black Metal with synthesisers and big light shows headlining at Wacken Open Air, again.

And so we come full circle with Black Metal Punk, a worldwide phenomenon for many years now, with a vast number of incredibly talented and brilliantly creative artists. Take your pick from Haunter, IIdjam, Devil Master, Social Apathy, Cape of Bats, Saidan and their myriad counterparts hidden deep in the dank, festering underground. All have taken the true spirit of Black Metal into their hearts and souls and regurgitated it back in your face as the black vomit of Satan.

Here, primitive, brutal and malign rebellion rules over any technical muso pretensions. Here, corpsepaint sits alongside a Dr Marten to the bollocks. No romance. No mystic forests and ambiguous mists. The Witchcraft at work here is from the street. Graffitied pentagrams on scummy walls, curses scratched with stiletto knives on rotting brickwork, sigils in filthy public toilets. Rituals are acts of vandalism and acts of utter delinquency.

Get the picture?

Belgian Necro Punkers POX slot into this sphere expertly. Like a syphilitic penis sliding into a grimy, slimy used condom. In fact, the latest release EP BKW: Black Knuckle Witchcraft pretty much represents what this most magnificent of all Black Metal genres is all about. Plague, rot, corruption as a form of initiation, an embrace of spiritual decay as a means to enter the domain of forbidden occult power.

BKW is end-to-end raw punk Black Metal, ruthless street brutality. Yes, the production is good, punchy and sounds big. But this in no way detracts from the aggressive, bloody, dirt-under-the-nails feel. In the world of POX, formed in Flanders, Belgium in 2014, the black knuckle is the vessel of power, delivering the Hex blow directly to the jaw of the intended victim.

Each of the five tracks delivers a crushing fist into the groin of the pretentious and overblown. Each is characterised by gritty, relentless riffing and measured, guttural vocals. From EP opener Luycifers kagie ende helscaps clove (Lucifer’s cage and hellscapes cleft) with its plague-era demonology feel to POX and the final track, a cover of Megiddo’s Blackened, this is damp, hostile, icy, ritualistic raw punk Black Metal for those who really understand the meaning of life on the street for intelligent, nihilistic warriors of the Left Hand Path.

Because, in the world of POX, in the realm of Black Metal Punk, the plague chooses you. The knuckles break you. The witchcraft remakes you.