Band: Demonic Resurrection (India) Album: The Return to Darkness (2010) Genre: Death/Black Metal In April The Baboon posted an extensive interview with Demonic Resurrection, one of India’s best known loud metal bands. Their latest studio record The Return to Darkness was released just after the turn of the year. The interview contains one of the tracks off this new album, so if you haven’t already, lend it an ear. Time to review the full record! By Niek

With The Return to Darkness you will get nearly 65 minutes of carefully composed Death Metal with a black metal sauce. Though track length is by no means an absolute measure of quality, it often does point towards good stuff. If you’ve ordered this album, or are planning to, you’ll be happy to know that the minimum track length is over five minutes. Each of these tracks offers more than a fixed song structure with emphasis on the chorus. Instead, you’ll get the more classical approach to writing music on your plate.

One thing that stood out for me, as I had listened to the whole album, was that the album is a whole lot darker than A Tragedy Befallen suggests. Perhaps some would sooner call it black metal with a sauce of condensed Death Metal therefore, but that’s just a matter of detail and personal preference. It does show how much this album is really a well-stirred mix of the two genres. Some tracks, such as The Warrior’s Return are without doubt purely black metal, in line with that of the Norwegian masters of the genre. Other songs are somewhat lighter. Point is that there’s variation.

In the interview with the band I asked The Demonstealer about Lord of Pestilence, an 11:29 minute song on the album that he would only lift a tiny piece of the curtain about. Having the album playing right now, I feel I should give you something more to work with.

Lord of Pestilence’s intro reminds of part of Metallica’s Welcome Home (Sanitarium), as does the whole epicness of the song. Calm, long-stretched clean vocals take you through the first three minutes of the song, while the instruments build up towards an expected climax. They fall down again though, just before the whole thing suddenly accelerates to rollercoaster speed and intensity. A silence before the storm, a dark and heavy storm, howling and battering and beating everything in its path. (Damn, I should drink more often when I write these things!)

After the sixth minute, the thing stagnates. A solo, slow, controlled and slightly oriental in atmosphere rains from the sky and does so for nearly one and a half minute. The Demonstealer returns with the mic and clean vocals and then it’s over. At least, it seems to be. Something still stirs. Not as violent, but all the more frightening. Hellish, possessed, tormented vocals on creepy key melodies. The pace picks up. A violent roar and battering guitar riffs. The armies from Hell march out. Then… finished. Not a message of hope, that’s for sure!

Honesty obliges me to say that the ambient, atmospheric key-job feels too artificial most of the time. Though it really ads to the darkness and the integrity of the album, it is very clear that it’s not real classical strings and organs you’re hearing. A pity, because Mephisto’s key work is only a shadow of what it could have been had real instruments been used. In my view Demonic Resurrection should have gone for a clear and obvious synthetic keyboard sound, not something that attempts to sound like the real deal. When you cannot reach the feeling of what it should’ve been, it’s just better to aim for something completely different. A small but important minus on an otherwise excellent album. Something to work on for the future.

The whole album feels professional and made with passion. It really is that story The Demonstealer talked about. A real product of love for the job.

Grade: 8.5/10
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Tags: black, dark, death, Indian, review

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 11:53 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.