Now, when it comes to death metal, I’ve always had a big preference for the Swedish style, in particular the Stockholm sound. Don’t get me wrong, I love all different styles, but the slimy gurgling sounds of early Entombed, Dismember et al have always had that extra horripilating edge for me. Thus, I jumped flailing at this promo in hope of some of the same.
‘Host of Rotting Flesh’ is the debut full length album from Umea’s Daemonicus and they play an enjoyable enough brand of death metal, with a lot of different influences of various death metal scenes (including a few touches of the Stockholm I’m happy to report!). For a new band, their sound is really old school with no blastbeats to be heard, and simplistic riffage that has more than a few similarities to the insatiable chug of Bolt Thrower and Master. There’s hardly anything in the way of breakdowns or any other modern elements that a lot of bands have incorporated into their sound, leading me to think that this is more ‘ancient’ school, as opposed to old school.
Whilst some would be irked by the occasional ‘groove’ riffs (when I hear the word ‘groove’ used when describing riffs, I immediately think ‘Pantera’, yet this is a world apart – it doesn’t groove… it crawls). All in all, I lapped this up big time. Grim artwork, fuzzy production, archaic riffage, no triggers, no fancy special effects – just really great sounding death metal the way it was 20 years ago. Yep, if it wasn’t for the better than usual production here this could easily have been a long lost album dug up from the dusty vaults of death metal circa 1989 (though with that said the production is still pretty damn murky for an album released in 2009).
So, the question is – are you fed up with all this technical death metal blasting molten rhythms and riffs at 1,000mph without so much as a memorable ‘song’? Do you lovingly hold onto your old fat-backed cathode ray telly over all these new fangled HD’s? Try Daemonicus for a one way ticket straight back in time (fat backed TV not included).
http://www.myspace.com/wwwdaemonicusnu
