Doom of Antichrist

Christian metal have often been a few years behind the secular scene - maybe with the exception of metalcore. Christian extreme metal in Norway was pretty seldom until that later part of the 90's. And one band that still is active today (under a different name) but started in the sub-sub-genre is Vitality. Four members of the Lind-family came together to give their take on extreme metal with a strong and shameless Christian message, and this resulted in the "Demo 96/97" release.

Vitality's demo is a bit all over the place within the umbrella-term extreme metal, and one might be afraid that this will turn into a sonic mess, but it actually works really well! The first three tracks on the demo all has a perfectly balanced mixture of mid-paced death metal, deathdoom and black metal. They can seem a bit progressive in their take on the genres, but without the whole "I lost my way in this riff and can't seem to find my way back" style of the progressive genre. Vitality has some great, groovy and rather dark passages with deep (yet rather understandable) growls and some ice-cold guitars going into black metal territory often accompanied with typical black metal screams. This great balance keeps the song interesting and even though some of them are rather lengthy, it doesn't really feel that way. They often give the music a time to breath, and the vocal-parts are well-placed. The fourth song "Dead and Rotten" might be the slowest song on the demo. It has a really catchy and groovy chorus but it does get boring and could have used a trim. As far as I remember, this is also the track that is left-out of the demo-compilation a few years later. The final song is much more straight black metal with Norwegian lyrics. A great way to finish the demo.

The production of the demo is really, really good. I love that the bass is up-front, and also has a few fine moments on its own. I also love the cold feel to the songs, and the vocals are very nice in the mix. This demo is a lot of fun to give a spin in the old boom box, and that really adds to the underground and extreme feel of the release. I will never trade this one for any digital release or whatnot.

Vitality changed their name into Drottnar a few years later and has become one of the most technical extreme bands out there. A very unique and extremely good band that you should check out. But they sound nothing like their old demo days now, and good luck finding this little extreme metal gem ;-)