Music / Barbatos

Barbatos are a Japanese black/thrash metal band with only one goal; to rock your fucking face off. Formed by bassist, vocalist, sole constant member, and mastermind Yasuyuki Suzuki as a side project of his band Abigail, Barbatos have a raw, primitive, Three Chords and the Truth approach to heavy metal, influenced by bands like Motörhead and Bathory. Their songs are short, simple, and fast, and their lyrics, written in absolutely butchered English and delivered in Yasuyuki's signature drunken vocal style, concern war, partying, Satanism, dirty sex, and the ways of heavy metal. The band have released an enormous number of demos, EPs, and splits, along with a handful of full studio albums.

The band's albums include (but are not limited to):

• War! Speed and Power (2001)
• Rocking Metal Motherfucker (2003)
• Fury and Fear, Flesh and Bone (2005)
• Let's Fucking Die! (2006)
• Straight Metal War (2015)

Barbatos provide examples of:

• The Alcoholic: Every other song is about getting absurdly drunk. They even have live albums with names like Live in Alcoholic Downtown.
• All Men Are Perverts: An essential part of the band's philosophy.
• Apocalypse How: "Apocalyptic Nuclear Hell" is about a world destroyed by global nuclear war. Satanism was involved.
• Badass Boast: "G-Point" contains this gem:
  "I am the devil and I fucked this bitch"
  • "Dick is Fucking Big" has the line, "Sexual metal holocaust will crush poser gay!"
  • "Apocalyptic Nuclear Hell" has, "I puke fire on the feeble flock of god/The mind fucked poser holocaust is here."
• Blood Knight: Any time they write about war, this is probably going to show up.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Most of their songs make liberal use of this.
• Department of Redundancy Department: One song is called "War Metal War."
• Gratuitous English: All of their lyrics are written like this, and it is glorious.
• Harsh Vocals: Yasuyuki has a sort of raspy howl, which one reviewer on Metal Archives described as sounding "like a drunk troll that wants to get laid."
• Heavy Meta: When they aren't writing about warfare, drinking, or sex, they're writing about playing true heavy metal and killing posers.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: "G-Point" describes having sex with a woman in terms of fighting in a furious battle. Or perhaps the narrator is doing both at the same time. It's somewhat unclear, due to the broken English.
  "Sex war machine
  I command pleasure and sin
  My intense firepower
  Drives her crazier"
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Yasuyuki himself is one.
• Miniscule Rocking: Most of their songs are about 2 minutes long.
• Purple Prose: A few of their songs, like "Prophecy of the Evening Star" and "Conflagration" have comparatively poetic and epic lyrics in contrast to their usual fare.
• Retraux: Like Abigail and Tiger Junkies, Barbatos is yet another deliberately retro throwback to old Japanese D-beat, proto-black metal, and punk-thrash, with Barbatos in particular focusing on the rawest and most barebones side of that general stylistic milieu.
• Rock Me, Asmodeus!: They write about Satan frequently, on tracks like "Prophecy of the Evening Star" and "Satanik Beer."
• Sex Drugs And Rock N Roll: The foundation of the band.
• Stylistic Suck: Yasuyuki Suzuki himself is a relatively fluent English speaker - the Engrish is a deliberate attempt to emulate old Japanese D-beat and punk-thrash acts who tried to write lyrics in English while having a poor grasp of it.
• Three Chords and the Truth: Their songs are short, simple, and to the point, in a way reminiscent of punk rock. Yasuyuki dubs the band's style "street metal."
• True Companions: Yasuyuki and Joel Grind. They even have a joint thrash/d-beat project called Tiger Junkies that they dust off whenever Joel is in Japan for more than a few days.
• The Vamp: The title character in "Red Leather Bitch."

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