Daemonic: The Art of Dantalian

Veld has been around for quite a while now, Daemonic: Art of Dantalian is their fourth album. They play a style rooted in Polish blackened death metal with forays into tech/brutal death subsets.

The album starts off with an eerie ambient/instrumental track that builds towards a tension building percussion. The second track does a little intro of it's own with a menacing riff before blasting away relentlessly. The drums are triggered and sound high in the mix. The vocals hit like a proverbial sledgehammer to face, the dude sounds like a more pissed off, faster Nergal but I have a sinking feeling that the growls have been over-layered and tempered with. The next two tracks also aim to pummel the listener with blastbeats. A careful listen also unearths subtle samples and atmospheric 'touches'. They aim to spice up the proceedings but are little more than mild distractions. This initial exhausting assault on the senses is alleviated by an acoustic instrumental.

After this fairly uneventful track we head towards the second half of the album. Though the blasts are present, these tracks primarily focus moreso on chugging and constructing catchy & groovy rhythms. A few moments tend to get slammy here too. Then before the finale we are presented an industrially-flavored mid-tempo track. It lingers on and on before culminating into an impressive solo which is sadly muddled by the perpetual bass drums. Then the 8 minute epic busts in with an aggressive keyboard interlude and then proceeds to twist and turn switching between crushing blasting and soft, dainty female vocals.

Despite playing a saturated style there is reasonable variety on display here. These dudes will bring to mind more accomplished names in the death scene but still they have a moderately unique sound which manages to hold it's own.

The handling of vocal/atmospheric samples could have been implemented more tastefully (seriously, what is up with that weird, cheesy, pseudo-narrative mumbling?). Also the record, in my opinion, is a little heavy on the blasting aspect. Despite some cool riffage, certain guitar parts came across rather uninspired. All things considered Daemonic: Art of Dantalian is a solid slab of blackened death with subtle brutal/tech death elements creeping in for added variety.

Recommended to fans of mid-career Behemoth, Hate, Hours of Penance, Nile etc.