Demonic Battle Metal

…if 50% of the audience wants blandness, and the 50% others want bad taste. I don't like Demonic Christ.

To avoid being excessively harsh, I'd say I don't really get them. Much like Heather Leather (I've been traumatized by this band, apparently), they have their really bad, what-the-fuck-inducing moments, and when they're not flinging shit at you, they are just not exactly interesting enough to deserve my sympathy. They're pretty bland. Some riffs to "We Have Risen" and "Witches Fall" are nice, second song's title is pretty cool too, the line "I menstruate on his face" is interesting from a feminist viewpoint, but then, it just falls back into basic, boring black/death metal.

I know black metal's appeal is supposed to be that it's basic, dark, angry, poorly produced, ugly. But even from underground bands, I expect some interesting musical moments, some interesting bizarreness, well, some personality. While Demonic Christ's music isn't exactly a pain in the ass to listen to, it's nothing that no other band could do. I don't sense a musical world, a sound of their own at all; and that is a big, big problem. While Heather Leather were awful instrumentalists with half baked compositions, I could still kinda recognize their sound among others, but Demonic Christ is just one of the millions of underground BM bands out there. This isn't giving me anything.

Nah, they do have something that could be slightly distinctive if a band that was just bad and not bad with a capital B would do it. They combine their musical unoriginality with lyrics that even 15 years old kids forming a shock rock band would pity. Let me quote a few things from the wonderfully titled "Church of Profane Masturbation": "I menstruate of his face" (while it makes sense considering the singer is a woman, it's still pretty damn ridiculous.), "The altar boy begs to be fucked", "Priesty gets on his knees and sucks them off". Sorry, I'm all for anti-christianity in black metal, but this isn't bad ass in any way, that just makes me giggle. Add to this vocals that may be admirable for their depth, but oddly sound like vomiting, and the song has a "legendary bad" potential.

And let's take some time to talk about the last track. It is an abomination of a song, so generic it makes you want to bang your head against the wall, and called "Blut und Ehre". I know the nationalist socialist black metal sub genre exists, that doesn't mean I have to like it… and in this case, it's not even good music. Not only does it reveal some very unpleasant truths about the band members' views of the world, it may also have lyrics even worse than "Church of Profane Masturbation". The way they're written, they don't seem to be about what the title suggests. Does Demonic Christ realize that "It was all a game to you" just sounds odd in this specific context? Also, the lyrics seem to be more about someone being angry at somebody who betrayed them, which isn't necessarily bad, but is way too common, and as I said, too vague for the context suggested by the title. The nazi references are thrown in for shock value because that's probably the only way people will remember this boring song.

And this song pretty much represents Demonic Christ as a whole. Devoid of personality, so bland it shouldn't exist, and when it shows some hints of a personality, it's a very unpleasant one at that. They want to shock, to be remembered for the wrong reasons, and that is not what good music is about for me.