Satan in the Death Row

The three-minute, dark ambient intro to Despot's Satan in the Death Row, with all the requisite scary synths, backmasked whispers, and machine percussion, gives you a great opportunity to take a gander at the album's rather unique cover art. First of all, the band already has a pretty unusual logo; rather than the standard elaborate, gothic-looking symmetrical logo favored by much of the black metal scene, you get an unusually legible logo that looks like a 70's version of something futuristic, à la Priest, or signage from something in Batman: The Animated Series. This is situated below a drawing of a rabid-looking mounted animal head, in turn mounted on a warmly colored surface. It's got this sort of strange, unsettling psychedelia to it that's rather subtle, which fits the music on this album like a glove.

Once the first song proper, "Matriarch" gets going, you might be under the impression that this is actually just a straightforward black metal album with an unusual choice of cover art, but then the haunting, quavering lead guitar comes in for the bridge, which then bleeds into a herky-jerky follow-up riff with a nicely thumping bass line. This song, like the cover art, does a fantastic job of setting the mood for the rest of the album: skullfucking, ripping blackened thrashing with nods to the giants of the first and second waves, all colored with a certain beguiling weirdness.

The lead guitar is consistently fucking bizarre. It's almost like sole member B.A.V. is trying to tread similar territory to Kerry King: sweeping, alien sounds to create an unsettling atmosphere rather than a focus on technicality or melody. However, the path taken to get there is totally different, with none of the whammy bar abuse and instead a more psych-freak style with origins that are wholly unfamiliar to the norms of metal lead guitar playing. Not to say that there aren't some more technical bits of shreddy fare, especially in the songs that adhere a little more closely to black metal's roots, but it's definitely the unorthodox leads that stand out in my mind, if only because they work so unexpectedly well. Check out the solo about 3/4 through the title track as another example. Is that even a guitar or some sort of mutant synth?

Of course, this sort of stuff wouldn't be much on its own if it weren't for a solid foundation in riffery, which the album thankfully has. Despot's approach to riffing heavily favors somewhat thrashy, pummeling powerchords, often structured with simple chord progressions that end in zanier bits of technicality. Sometimes the thrashing really takes over ("Purified by Fire") while other tracks contain just hints of it, with the riffing favoring a more Nordic flavor ("Forbidden"). All of the riffs are supported with a nice, clean and clearly audible bass. Sometimes it's a bit more adventurous, with little fills and accents, but even when it's just following the riff it stands out a bit since the crunchy guitar tone leaves plenty of room for the bass to add definition to the riffs. There's also some really subtle use of keys that are sometimes buried in the mix, serving to fatten up the tone. Some guitar lines even get doubled by a faint acoustic guitar that adds even more layers to the sound. This all makes for a fairly dense mix, but the clear production and tight playing keep everything audible to the discerning ear.

The most disappointing aspect of the album are the unfortunately, and obviously, programmed drums. The actual programming itself is pretty expertly done, with thrash beats and double bass dominating and blasts as support during appropriate moments. There's plenty of attention paid to neat fills and creative, organic use of accents and cymbal theatrics. However, the samples used are ultra sterile, fake-sounding clicky-hell, where you get that unfortunate effect of the snare being just barely different from the bass drums, and the cymbals rendered into abstract sibilants. Normally I'd say something like, "a real drummer would've been a huge boost" but here I think I would be completely OK with the same programming driving better-sounding drum samples.

Fortunately, my gripes about the drum sound are largely offset by other factors, the vocals being one of them. B.A.V. has a competently-performed mid-ranged rasp which he utilizes for much of the album, but he augments the vocal performance with tasteful use of lower growls and some truly excellent deep, echoey cleans. These are used not just as subtle backing vocals but as the lead vocal technique for certain passages. B.A.V.'s not just a talented vocalist, but a guy with a really good ear for layering and arranging different vocal techniques in a way that makes wonderful use of his diverse abilities but that also feels totally natural. Changes in style come purely with shifts in the mood of the music the vocals narrate.

While Satan in the Death Row is a really fun listen, I can't help but feel like it would be infinitely harder-hitting if the riffing style had as much of its own identity as so much of the rest of the music does. B.A.V. is a talented musician, songwriter and arranger, but nowhere on this album did I ever feel like the meat of the material, i.e. the guitar riffs, had quite as much character as the lead guitar, the vocal performance, or the generally experimental vibe that permeates the the songs from the beginning of the album to the end. I think it'd also be greatly improved with a less irritating drum sound, as I mentioned, but also with a more organic-sounding production in general. Still a very neat album and refreshing in its mixture of destructive thrashing, alien weirdness and notable professionalism.