Christ Is a Lie

This is very, very good, and is better than most of the death metal coming out of larger and more established areas. Demogorgon pretty much owns, plain and simple. Imagine newer Vital Remains stripped of the neoclassical influences and agonizingly long track times and infused instead with Krisiun's penchant for brutality and you have a good idea of the music here: punishing, ultra-intense death metal with an emphasis on constant percussive assault and the pause that forces the return of the music to come back down like a hammerblow to the back of the skull. It's a visceral breed of death metal that I adore; maybe it's because this album is only just over twenty minutes long, but the music here seems more effective than just about any other DM out there today.

Demogorgon's music is concise. There is no time wasted in these short songs, and each one is packed with constant tremolo riffs, double bass, blast beats, and throaty death metal vocals in the Polish style of bands like Vader. The number of parts on this album where the band slows down can be counted on one hand. Otherwise, the music is essentially a nonstop onslaught of relentless eastern European brutality. The tremolo riffs played are very good and spectacularly Satanic in nature, not entirely unlike Deicide, but more openly atonal and modern. A small Nunslaughter influence seems to be present as well, with the cooly evil nature of the melodies played. Drumming is pretty damned fantastic: the kit never stops being abused terribly with enormous speed, and the album is almost entirely composed of double bass, blasting, or militaristic patterns. A comparison to Sweden's mighty Aeon can actually be drawn in these dimensions: the music has a sort of endlessly barraging militaristic feel to it, like you're hearing the cloven hoofs of some mighty Satanic warmarch. The music may seem one-dimensional at first, and to some degree, it is: most of the music here is based off sequences of vicious tremolo riffs over blast beats and growls. But those riffs are good, and the overall sound the band projects is very compelling.

The production is surprisingly clean and professional, though the drums are perhaps a bit too loud, with bass drums occasionally dominating some of the more subtle and intricate riffs. But what the sound lacks in definition it makes up for with a core of strength and brute force. Every piece of this album is wrapped around a single core of brutality, a constant stream of absolute anti-Christian aggression and hatred. There's not much in the way of rhythmic play, thrash riffing, or slower passages because all of those in some way represent compromise. This is not a very subtle album at all, and the band really only knows how to go straight forward as quickly and efficiently as possible. It is not music that stops and smells the roses at any time.

While this is fairly monodimensional music, I find that I greatly enjoy it. Demogorgon knows how to craft quality death metal, and 'Christ Is A Lie' is a fantastic opening salvo from the band. This is almost the sort of band that appears to exist in a vacuum, as if nothing that goes on in the metal scene will affect their singular vision. When the nuclear holocaust comes, Demogorgon will likely shrug their collective shoulders and write more riffs. Really worth a look for all the DM fans out there.