Haiduk
Demonicon

Spellbook, the 2012 debut from this Canadian/Balkan one man project was a pretty solid slab of thrash/death/black metal. Not much has changed in 3 years. The sound is a tight, almost robotic (due to programmed drums), death/thrash release with gruff almost Chris Barnes is growls.

There’s no wasted sound, no intros, no interludes, and while the drums sound more obviously programmed than Spellbook, it’s not distracting from the no nonsense 32 minutes.  The 9 tracks, each named after a demon, blaze by with mechanical precision, that come close to The Berzerker type assault, that might not be intended.The guitars shred and dart with no wasted tones and even some clever layering and melodies lurk behind the krieg.

A few slower moments break things up very briefly such as moments of “Azyr” or most varied and longest closing number “Xhadex”, , but for the most part its the likes of opener “Syth”,  “Narzon”, “Sarxas”, “Corloch” and “Nergion”, which are all as pretty interchangeable as their demonic monikers. There’s nothing more to be said here. There’s 32 minutes of tight, blistering full on death thrash, take it or leave it.

[Visit the band's website]
Written by Erik T
January 20th, 2016

Comments

  1. Commented by: Ace Barker

    I’ll gladly leave this derivative bland shit in the thanks but no thanks pile…


  2. Commented by: Luke_22

    From the snippets I’ve heard this sounds disappointing, particularly after showing so much promise on the debut.


Leave a Reply

Privacy notice: When you submit a comment, your creditentials, message and IP address will be logged. A cookie will also be created on your browser with your chosen name and email, so that you do not need to type them again to post a new comment. All post and details will also go through an automatic spam check via Akismet's servers and need to be manually approved (so don't wonder about the delay). We purge our logs from your meta-data at frequent intervals.

  • The Mist From The Mountains - Portal - The Gathering of Storms
  • Massacre - Necrolution
  • Abramelin - Sins of the Father
  • Arkona - Stella Pandora
  • Infern - Turn of the Tide
  • Obsidian Mantra - As We All Will
  • Theurgy - Emanations of Unconscious Luminescence
  • Krilloan - Return of the Heralds
  • Esoctrilihum - Döth-Derniàlh
  • Undeath - More Insane
  • Mork - Syv
  • Wind Rose - Trollslayer
  • Vomit Forth - Terrified Of god
  • Ripped to Shreds - Sanshi
  • The Weeping Gate - Illuminate & Desecrate