The War at the Edge of Existence

There’s no shortage of the female persuasion in today’s metal scene, but few can stand toe-to-toe with Samantha Michelle Smith, a 21-year-old brutalizer who has made it her mission in life to dole out some of the heaviest music going.

The heiress apparent to the deathly throne of Vanessa Nocera, Smith has already proven herself quite prolific, actively playing with bands like Guttural Slug, Broken Anatomy, and Ennoea. Her latest release is The War at the Edge of Existence, the full-length debut from her one-woman slamming brutal death metal band Fight the Demiurge.

Not too far removed from Cameron Argon and his Disfiguring the Goddess project, the multi-instrumentalist Smith injects a sense of mechanized evil into the music, a sci-fi trait that owes itself to the album’s guitar tone and its systematic drumming patterns. In addition to her improved guitar playing, it’s plain to hear that Smith is growing more and more comfortable with DYI production. With depth charges and a swirling atmosphere, a track like “The Coming” showcases her enhanced songwriting skills, and the record’s overall flow is neatly mapped, heaving boulders from track to track while Smith’s monstrous vocals – deeper, uglier, and more cavernous than ever – are roared and gurgled with a smart sense of placement and pulse.

As far as slam albums go, The War at the Edge of Existence doesn’t quite attain the status of show-stopper, as it seems to rely on its gargantuan production to do most of the heavy-lifting. But this isn’t to say that riffs and slams aren’t there for the taking. The intro to “Annihilation” is thunderous and far too short-lived, and there’s no shortage of blood-flow when an ungodly gallop emerges around the 25 second mark (and then again at 1:11) of the destructive “Parallax.”

While this reviewer would have desired a few more creative slams or momentum shifts, Smith does an effective job of cramming The War at the Edge of Existence with a robust assortment of simple, punchy riffs that never fail in choking the life out of the room. If it wasn’t before, Fight the Demiurge should find itself on the brutal death metal map with this gut-check of a debut release.

Written for The Metal Observer