Demiurgon. Even the name itself sends shivers down my damn spine. These skull-crushing, freakishly fiendish foes are a Technical/Groove/Death Metal outfit (what the hell are sub genres these days, am I right?) reborn out of an old project of theirs named Hatred, minus the relatively new recruit, bassist Riccardo Benedini. Their debut under this new identity, “Above the Unworthy”, was a good stepping stone to build upon this monolithic Death Metal goliath that is “The Oblivious Lure”. The band really doesn’t let up their gig with the speed, either. Only to slow down for these groove breakdowns that will make not only your head fall off of your head, but you’re whole upper torso will just fall off from the brute force. They effortlessly bring a sense of impending doom to any listener who dare tread among their swamp, with some Tech Death, Groove, guitar and vocal squeals all thrown into their cauldron of despair. In all seriousness, main composers Emanuele Ottani (guitarist) and Riccardo Valenti (drums) really bring in an array of metal into this wonderful performance.
Jumping right into the album is the brutal “Tsansas”, which is just an inch away from being an aural abomination, in a very, very good way. According to my ever trustworthy friend google, “Tsansas” roughly translates to ‘a shrunken head’. How Metal. Funny that, I swear I had a shrunken head before listening to this because it feels like I was thrown three hundred different subgenres of Metal two hundred being in the Death Metal idiom) in the span of forty minutes. Every song has their place on this album, but I feel that songs like “…Dèi Dimenticati” and “Profezia Di Una Specie Morente”, and the title-track stick out just that little more, because I just wasn’t expecting what was coming next. When “Profezia…” started, I felt like the four count china hit and mosh was about to start and kill me. Then I just got an aural punch in the face instead, which is fine. I feel that the slower songs somehow were more interesting to me, however. That’s silly for my taste because I much prefer absolute blistering speed over doom and gloom. But when the Death Metal aspect takes up too much of your sound, you become linear. If you ask me, I like my Death Metal (and Metal in general) with some variety, and I feel that Demiurgon bring that on “The Oblivious Lure”.
As a small side note, the production of “The Oblivious Lure” really highlights the talent of this band. From the drummer’s clean-ass gravity blasts to the singer’s ferocious roars, gargles, Glen-Benton-isms and other vocal wizardry. Oh… and singing in Italian is so dope as well. It’s good to see bands like this showing their cultural background instead of adapting to a broken English style of evil babbling. The babbling is still there, it’s just in a language I can barely understand. As if the growls weren’t making it easy enough to understand.
All in all, a solid tech death album
Rating – 3.5/5
Snag their goods here:
http://everlastingspewrecords.bandcamp.com/
…aaaaand go give them a follow here:
The Metal Wanderlust 