Demisery play modernized, meat and potatoes, old school Death Metal. Check. For their LP, Demisery effectively bridges the gap between classic Swedish and American Death Metal very well (not to suggest those two international scenes didn't cross-pollinate. Tape trading. Heavy metal nerds of yore) -- you'll pick up moments that are very Morbid Angel alongside visceral, buzzsaw Dismember riffs, all of which mesh together very well. It's more of a soup than a salad, if you catch my drift. The vocals and drums are both pretty decent but they play second banana to the guitar playing on this album, which is impressive without being overly technical. Maybe the only flaw that I can pick out is that during my first listen through there weren't too many memorable moments but on the other hand, it is consistently very strong for the duration of the album. There's also a Death cover. Good. Also, by dissecting the mechanics of this, I don't want to sound un-enthused because I'm not. This is top shelf Death Metal and speaking as a guitarist, it's always exciting (and sometimes a little bit frustrating) to hear a person or a group succeed in hitting that sweat spot between aggression and precision, dissonance and consonance, etc. etc. etc.
Nice. It's Death Metal. Not reinventing the wheel or anything like that but it's definitely well-conceived and exciting.
The other aspect of this project that is so interesting is it's status as a studio project by two musicians. This is, as I understand it, mainly a side project of Keith Merrow, who's better known for instrumental metal compositions that kind of remind me of Cloudkicker (Check it. Cloudkicker.) and may or may not be associated with djent (though truthfully, what solo material I've listened to has been much more interesting than quote unquote djent groups/artists), which may or may not be a little bit of a silly trend with some redeemable qualities. To me, the redeemable, interesting, and otherwise important qualities that seem endemic to what has been referred to as djent in particular are to what extent processes that yield a complete product, musically speaking (recording, mastering, distributing, etc.), are done DIY by fewer and fewer people with less pricey, "professional" equipment in favor of software, musical production suites, digital drum plug-ins and what have you.
This is in some ways almost the spiritual opposite side of the coin to the explosion of bedroom Black Metal bands in the Myspace age, who in many cases may well have had the requisite passion but in no way possessed the technical knowledge to make an even remotely listenable project. Speaking from my limited experience in digital home production (postponed indefinitely), it's a pricey hobby but far less expensive than paying for time in a studio or investing in the kind of recording and production equipment you'd find in a professional studio. It's a really promising idea, giving one full creative control in every aspect of the final product with a sliding deadline. All the more time to dial in the most suitable guitar tone, refine one's riffs. Everything. I somewhat facetiously tagged this post as "the future" because I think this will only become more common. It's more than likely established bands will do as they've always done and go to trusted studios for what they need but I'm counting on more groups like Demisery popping up, having produced sonically perfect albums all by themselves.
Bleccchhhh, this is really poorly written but you get what I'm saying. I don't really care to proofread this since I'm already past my self-imposed deadline. Don't do as I do.
I recommend checking out Demisery, as I keep saying. You can stream/download Hives of Mutation on Keith Merrow's site, as well as order a copy on CD.
KM/Demisery
-W.F.
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