Demonic Battle Metal

Now here’s a great compilation for all Demonic Christ fans and anyone else with an interest in old school American black/death metal. The first pressing of this CD was limited to 250 copies but fortunately BlackMetal.com re-released it.

First up is the “Deceiving the Heavens” demo 1993. It contains three tracks of brutal and raw black/death metal, total underground stuff for sure. The sound took a bit of time for me to get used but after I did, I really enjoyed this demo. The music sounds like a mixture of early Absu stuff and Archgoat. Of all the stuff on this disc, “Deceiving the Heaves” has the most brutal vocals: death grunts. I also think Dana pulls the grunts off quite well, not too many complaints about the vocals from me. By the way, “Church of Profane Masturbation” (love that title!) features a cool spoken passage as well.

In 1994 Demonic Christ were offered a deal and their debut album “Punishment for Ignorance” was released in 1995. After the release of debut, the band recorded the stuff next up on this compilation, namely “Promo 1995”. The sound here is much more professional than on both “Deceiving the Heavens” and “Punishment for Ignorance” and this makes the music a lot heavier. The music has also developed, being more varied and a bit more technical than before, yet still retaining the trademark Demonic Christ sound. The vocals here are mostly black metal type but there are still a few death grunts present. Due to the development of the music and the change in vocal style, I can’t compare this stuff to Archgoat but the Absu comparison remains. In 1996 Demonic Christ released another two-track promo. Both of these tracks have appeared on compilation CDs. The music isn’t really different from the previous promo tape. Both tracks are brutal black/death metal with some technical touches.

The compliation shows Demonic Christ’s musical evolution – from raw and primitive to more refined and technical, yet never losing the brutal essence. Our beloved achtbarer keltischer warrior Dana Duffey has not had an easy ride with her band but she has persevered nonetheless. Oh yeah, and the answer to the eternal question “Can a female front a brutal metal band convincingly?” is “Yes, at least in this case”.