Label: Invictus Productions
Release date: October 4th, 2024
Northern neighbor land of Sweden is Norway. This country is clearly associated with black metal. Well, I think a lot of people probably think Norwegian plays only this genre of our beloved music. Such a reputation has been dragging itself behind the country of fjords since the nineties, when there was a rash of hordes playing just mentioned before sub-genre of metal. Of course, it has, and never had, not too much to do with reality. I mean, there were always great bands playing death, thrash or heavy metal in Norway. They just were in the deep shadow of the black metal scene and the reasons for this are still a huge mystery to me. I don’t think I should list here these ensembles I meant in the previous sentence. There’s no time for that, and it isn’t even the right place to do it. Anyways, one of the younger representatives of, let’s call it, non-black scene is Abhorration. It was born when coronavirus was the most active, or at least we heard about it every entire day, had some restrictions connected with it and so on. Next year, in November, guys released a debut demo entitled “After Winter Comes War” containing eight tracks and originally released as a cassette (it’s sold out at the moment, as I know) and digitally as well. But last year there was also a CD with this stuff.
For their debut full-length we must wait three years. Well, to be precise I should use the word “almost”, because the premiere took place September 27th, so not too long ago as you can see. By the way, it can probably seem for some kind of curiosity, but we have on “Demonolatry” two less songs than it was in case of the demo. But they take something like fifteen minutes more instead. This time Irish Invictus Productions released it also in three formats – cassette is replaced by 12” vinyl /no possibility to buy it anymore). And what sub-genre of our beloved music these four Norwegian metalheads present to us? Yeah, you perhaps already know, after reading the first paragraph of this review, this is not black metal as well. So, what is your type? Yes, those of you who bet on death metal guessed! I tell you even more – that’s real old-school creativity, which is strongly based on the Floridian way of playing such music created in the eighties. I have clear associations with first of all one band whose name I’ll not, of course, mention here. But I can only tell you this is about the one coming from Tampa where the very first drummer and vocalist who recorded its demos and debut album was Mike Browning. Association is all the stronger, because Magnus’s growling resembles quite strongly the one known from mentioned recordings. And at this moment, every self-respecting fan of the genre knows very well what’s going on, what to expect from this album. That’s why I could end writing right here. I could and maybe even I should do it, but no way! If I did it, I’d have lost a good and even reasonable excuse to listen to “Demonolatry” and it was the last thing I’d like. This is even not because I’ve been a great fan of such playing for ages, from the era when I heard it mentioned before the ensemble for the first time. A much more important reason is that guys are playing at a really high level. You can easily recognize they play their instruments much longer (even if they all were born in the nineties), especially in the case of bassist Andreas, then date of Abhorration ’s birth would suggest.
In short, “Demonolatry” is a great album which should be on the regiment of anyone who likes old-school, classic as hell Floridian death metal! Anyways, Abhorration is one more young ensemble that calms me down about the future of the genre. And I’d like to dedicate this scribble to all people, mostly my age, who claim that the mentioned genre is already dead, and young bands offer anything interesting! Yeah! Norwegians don’t play anything what we didn’t hear before, as longer listen you to metal as more times you did it, but in my opinion it’s much better to play like that on high level than think during creative process in vain “we need to create something original, something what will make folk lie ‘wow, anyone before them played like that’. This second option mostly ends with some catastrophe, which hasn’t too much to do with metal.
