Daemonicus - Eschaton (Black Lion Records) [Paul Scoble]
Swedish band Daemonicus have been making nasty, brutal music together since 2006. The four piece made up of P.O. Wester on Vocals and Guitar, David Ekevärn on Drums, Jögen Persson on Guitar and Martin Pudas on Bass, have made 2 albums before Eschaton; Host Of Rotting Flesh in 2009 and Deadwork in 2012. The band play a very old school style of Death Metal, most of the influences on Eschaton come from the late eighties or early nineties Death Metal scene, back when Old School Death Metal was just known as Death Metal. Clearly Daemonicus like a bit of Metal nostalgia, but is this on the same level as albums made in this exciting, early Death Metal period, or is it a pale imitation?
The material on Eschaton is mainly a mix of very fast and brutal Old School Death Metal, and very slow, crushingly heavy and no less brutal Death Metal. The song The Double Edge Sword is a good example of the faster end of the spectrum. The track is fast, driving and beautifully flowing, it features a very pleasing guitar solo, and just to mix things up a bit, the track has a very slow and heavy ending.
Swedish band Daemonicus have been making nasty, brutal music together since 2006. The four piece made up of P.O. Wester on Vocals and Guitar, David Ekevärn on Drums, Jögen Persson on Guitar and Martin Pudas on Bass, have made 2 albums before Eschaton; Host Of Rotting Flesh in 2009 and Deadwork in 2012. The band play a very old school style of Death Metal, most of the influences on Eschaton come from the late eighties or early nineties Death Metal scene, back when Old School Death Metal was just known as Death Metal. Clearly Daemonicus like a bit of Metal nostalgia, but is this on the same level as albums made in this exciting, early Death Metal period, or is it a pale imitation?
The material on Eschaton is mainly a mix of very fast and brutal Old School Death Metal, and very slow, crushingly heavy and no less brutal Death Metal. The song The Double Edge Sword is a good example of the faster end of the spectrum. The track is fast, driving and beautifully flowing, it features a very pleasing guitar solo, and just to mix things up a bit, the track has a very slow and heavy ending.
Another place where things get pretty rapid is the track The Grand Inquisitor which, after a chanted intro, is insanely fast. The fast parts have a definite D-Beat feel to them that is wonderfully energised. The Grand Inquisitor also has a very slow chorus, wherever Daemonicus slow things down it works very well, the riffs are breathtakingly heavy and remind me of Bolt Thrower, Autopsy and probably most of all it reminds me of Asphyx. The material on Eschaton also boasts some melody mixed in with all of the brutality, the track Fate Sealed Faith boasts some very fast and brutal riffs, but there is also a lot of melody in the chorus, and the song has a very tuneful and melodic section in the second half of the song.
The band have managed to balance this mix of Brutal and Melodic in a very enjoyable way.
Eschaton is a very good Old School Death Metal album, it isn’t that original, but that isn’t really the point. In many ways this is a very simple and direct album, most of the songs are short and to the point. They turn up, kick your head in and then leave almost immediately, but they do leave an impression, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks humming all the riffs, and that is a great sign of a good album. If you are pining for some late eighties or early nineties style Death Metal then this is an album to seek out. 8/10
Grisly - Salting The Earth (XStreem Records) [Richard Oliver]
Three words that always manage to warm my cold dead heart are Swedish death metal. That filthy HM-2 guitar tone sounds as killer in 2021 as it did when it first reared its blood crusted chainsaw self in the late 80’s and early 90’s. There are a legion of younger bands paying homage to the old school Swedish sound and although they don’t hit the heights of luminaries such as Entombed, Dismember, Carnage and Entrails most bands do a damn good job of emulating the sound.
One such band is Grisly who have a killer second album of HM-2 worship with Salting The Earth. It is one of the countless bands featuring Rogga Johansson (seriously look at his page on Metal Archives) who performs vocals, guitars and bass and is also joined by Håkan Stuvemark on lead guitars and Nicke Ohlsson on drums. Basically if you have heard Swedish death metal then you know what you are getting here and that is filthy riffs, punky rhythms and a guitar tone that makes you feel like you need a bath after listening. Grisly aren't a Swedish death metal by numbers band though as they incorporate a lot more melody than most of their contemporaries into their sound such as in songs like By Inferno’s Light, Mutilator and Last Days In Fear. Although melodic this album doesn’t stray into melodeath territory with a near perfect balance between the melodic moments and the usual HM-2 death metal filth.
Salting The Earth is a very fun, solid, catchy and enjoyable piece of HM-2 death metal. It doesn’t try and reinvent or breathe new life into the genre but simply plays to all its strengths. The incorporation of a more melodic edge helps these songs stand out as really killer death metal songs with tunes such as Mexico (Reign Of Bullets) guaranteed to wreck some necks. It is a very short album with ten songs running in at just under half an hour but this is very much quality over quantity. 8/10
GUHTS – Blood Feather EP (Self Released) [Simon Black]
Eschaton is a very good Old School Death Metal album, it isn’t that original, but that isn’t really the point. In many ways this is a very simple and direct album, most of the songs are short and to the point. They turn up, kick your head in and then leave almost immediately, but they do leave an impression, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks humming all the riffs, and that is a great sign of a good album. If you are pining for some late eighties or early nineties style Death Metal then this is an album to seek out. 8/10
Grisly - Salting The Earth (XStreem Records) [Richard Oliver]
Three words that always manage to warm my cold dead heart are Swedish death metal. That filthy HM-2 guitar tone sounds as killer in 2021 as it did when it first reared its blood crusted chainsaw self in the late 80’s and early 90’s. There are a legion of younger bands paying homage to the old school Swedish sound and although they don’t hit the heights of luminaries such as Entombed, Dismember, Carnage and Entrails most bands do a damn good job of emulating the sound.
One such band is Grisly who have a killer second album of HM-2 worship with Salting The Earth. It is one of the countless bands featuring Rogga Johansson (seriously look at his page on Metal Archives) who performs vocals, guitars and bass and is also joined by Håkan Stuvemark on lead guitars and Nicke Ohlsson on drums. Basically if you have heard Swedish death metal then you know what you are getting here and that is filthy riffs, punky rhythms and a guitar tone that makes you feel like you need a bath after listening. Grisly aren't a Swedish death metal by numbers band though as they incorporate a lot more melody than most of their contemporaries into their sound such as in songs like By Inferno’s Light, Mutilator and Last Days In Fear. Although melodic this album doesn’t stray into melodeath territory with a near perfect balance between the melodic moments and the usual HM-2 death metal filth.
Salting The Earth is a very fun, solid, catchy and enjoyable piece of HM-2 death metal. It doesn’t try and reinvent or breathe new life into the genre but simply plays to all its strengths. The incorporation of a more melodic edge helps these songs stand out as really killer death metal songs with tunes such as Mexico (Reign Of Bullets) guaranteed to wreck some necks. It is a very short album with ten songs running in at just under half an hour but this is very much quality over quantity. 8/10
GUHTS is a Post-Metal side project from the husband and wife team at the centre of Witchkiss (Scott and Amber Prater from New York) and was born out of the song writing process for that act and the realisation that these sounds were sufficiently different from the more Doom/Stoner sounding Witchkiss to warrant birthing them in a project in their own right. Personally apart from adding a lot more emotional angst and some Gothic keyboard layering, it still feels like it could be from the same band, due to the presence of Amber’s distinctive vocals, but I guess sometime you need to do a project with new faces as well and in this instance the rest of the players are borrowed from North Carolina’s Black Mountain Hunger.
The four tracks on this EP very much feel like part of a contiguous whole. It’s moody, dark and ethereal, with Amber’s haunting but punk-tinged and angst ridden vocals wailing over the top of the heavy and threateningly doomy feel of the instrumentation. She’s a drummer as well as a singer (although not on the stool on this project) and you can hear that in the way she phrases her lyrical delivery. It makes for a different sound, as usually in this style the vocal melody lines complement the rhythms, but in this case they follow the beats and time signatures very closely.
Her voice is harsher than the normal clean and symphonic tone that this style delivers, which gives it a much harsher and more effective edge. At first it did not appeal, but on the second and third listen I really found it growing on me. The song writing could perhaps do with a little tightening up, with the final two tracks having just that little too much run time but this is an interesting enough project for me to be curious to see where a full length album might go. 6/10
Eldingar- Maenads (Pest Records) [Matt Bladen]
Hellenic black metal is a genre unto itself, because of this there is no end of evolution in the genre, though most of the bands stay true to that Hellenic black metal sound originated by Rotting Christ, Necromantia and Varathron. From Athens, Greece, Eldingar are a two-piece made of Stavros Londos (guitars/compositions) and Andreas Simitzis (vocals/lyrics) but despite there only being two members there's nothing simple about Maenads which is their debut album. They have collaborated with Markos Samaras (arrangement/production), Nefeli Karra (drums), Gregory Londos (bass) and Dimitris Zigras (cello, Cretan lyra and lute), giving them a much fuller sound with the folk, death and thrash influences strewn throughout.
Maenads kicks off with the raging Maenads Crave full on Hellenic black metal with tremolo picking, moving into some thunderous death metal riffs, Stavros unleashing his guitar prowess as Andreas roars with vitriol. The acoustic interlude of Height leads into the epic doom sounding Height Of The Moon over 7 minutes of death doom that shifts between slow doom metal and full black metal speed. Serenity's Anger is full on thrash and once again followed by another interlude called Serenity's from where we are taken into the classical guitar and strings of Inside Trauma which shifts into the progressive Trauma. Maenads is a slow burner of a record, it needs repeated listens for you to really get into it but once it unveils it's charms you are captivated by this excellent black metal record. 8/10