Abominations thru Genocidal Hellfire

One thing I love about discovering an underground death metal record is when the band's music that I stumbled on takes me back and brings memories of the consequential years of the outward advancement of the genre. And that is exactly what I got when I first heard the music of the Philippines' pure raw and warmongering death metal act, Demonic. Demonic has actually been around for ten years in the underground metal domain of the Philippines releasing demos and EPs, but it was the year 2018 that I had the chance to heard a lot about this death metal trio.

Even after I have found out about Demonic, I only was able to listen to a few tracks of the band from earlier demos and promo releases as access to their materials were kind of hard to find. It was in May of 2019 where I finally was able to grab a copy of one of their records in the form of the 2018 debut full-length released under Thresthold Records called "Abominations thru Genocidal Hellfire". I instantly got into the album the moment I spin it as it totally takes you down memory lane straight to the early days of death metal.

Demonic's musical stylistic attributes have qualities as to that of the early underground death metal offerings wherein it gives you that feeling of nostalgia to a time when the pioneers were still developing this mere uglier cousin to the already established thrash metal genre. To the ears of those who are familiar with the roughness of the records coming out during that era, you will be glad to hear how Demonic's material holds that familiar noisy static and raw low-precision mixture with a handful of kick-ass tracks beneath it.

Listening to the shivery sounding exterior of the album will uncloak how the band has taken some of the more chaotic elements of early Hellhammer, Slayer, and Kreator and put a raw element over top of it that is just as nasty as to what Possessed, early Morbid Angel, and Necrovore would put out during the premature years of extreme metal. The guitar section of the record definitely is combative and menacing and it totally possessed that deep, murky feel to them as to what the band is trying to achieve in honoring the forefathers of death metal. The vocal attack on here is infuriated, morbid and is clearly operating on the same wavelength as to those of the trailblazers of extreme metal. Oh yes, you won't definitely find any discernible melody to it.

The drums and bass guitar in here perfectly provide a powerful backbone for the guitars to lay their thrashing mayhem over. Both instruments follow that rudimentary proto-death metal discharge where it makes the intensity of the guitar and the vocal dispatch more evil and more in pandemonium than it already is. To go straight to the point, this debut is an exemplification to the utter fury and Satanic onslaught unleashed by a cacodemonic death metal band which had been hammering out and molding out their Mephistophelian intent in the underground realms of the Philippine extreme metal domain for almost a decade.

If you like your metal well polished and trendy to the ears, then this is not a record for you. But if you're one of those who prefer their metal animalistic, beastly, and raw to the bone; then you will most certainly enjoy this debut from Demonic. The intense thrash/death riffage, the raw and powerful vocals, the driving bass lines, and the endless blast beating drums in this record all combine to show pure fucking aggressive and obscene old school proto-death metal debut. This right here is a static heavy slab of discharged hysteria!!!!