Devoted to Satan

There are a lot of reasons not to like this disc. It’s about as unprofessional a recording as you will ever find. In fact, it sounds like a bunch of kids jamming to their unformed juvenile concept of “evil” music in their basement and then recording the whole thing on a 4 track. Which is odd, considering the members of this band probably had at least two dozen other more “Serious” (and some not-so-serious) bands between them as part of the “Circle Of French Bands With Unpronounceable Names”.

So it’s actually rather surprising that, believe it or not, I actually kind of enjoy this. Why? Hard to explain, but perhaps if you can remember back to your first band, you and your 15 year old buddies jamming in your garage after raiding your parents’ liquor cabinet and creating primitive, but catchy evil riffs, I bet your band might have sounded something like this. The raw, unbridled enthusiasm and raucous, rock n’ roll spirit shines through here because it just feels genuine, and it really helps that the riffs, simple as they are, are catchy as heck. They seem to have that subtle knack for making you want to headbang to this, which honestly is something most truly amateur bands don’t always grasp. It’s dirty, raw, noisy, and primitive, much like a lot of early black metal was.

The whole thing has a very garage punk feel to it, which you will either love or hate, depending on your taste or tolerance for that kind of thing. The guitars have that “cheap distortion pedal” fuzzed out sound and the drums have a distinct tinny “pflopp” to them that you can only get from a basic cheap thrift store drum kit recorded on basic cheap thrift store equipment. And it sounds honestly like it was recorded live, in one take, f-ups and all, which is cool.

The 4 songs on here are short, loud, obnoxious, and to the point - all roughly between 2 and 3 minutes in length, and that’s not including the two obligatory “spooky” tracks (electric organ, someone singing in Latin) at the beginning and the end of the disc. The riffs are, as I said, somewhat punk-ish in composition, but fortunately not in a smarmy sk8erboi kind of way, but rather more like “we want to be like Darkthrone and Celtic Frost, but aren’t quite talented enough yet” kind of way. Which makes them cool. You could definitely call this black metal, but one thing it has going for it is that it lacks all the annoying clichés of most black metal bands, so there’s no endless repetitive blast beats, tremolo-picked guitars, screechy vocals, and so on. Most of the tracks are sort of mid-paced, anthemic stomps with rather simplistic drumbeats. Even the fast drumming on “Evil Prevails” (the only really fast track) is more of a thrashy beat than a black metal style blast beat. Vocals are a combination snarling/growling rather than a high-pitched ”panda-faced metal” screech, which works perfectly with the dirty guitar sound.

Honestly, this is not really the type of recording I could recommend to a lot of people because it’s just so dang raw that most people would just find it annoying and then bitch at me after hearing it..."you recommended this band to me and they suck”. And while I can’t really argue with that, I would add that they suck in a cool way, because honestly, I love the dirty garage punk feel of it and the infectious catchiness of the whole thing. And a lot of black metal fans would bitch about the lack of blast beats, tremolo riffs, and general lack of professionalism in the execution, but again this isn’t really for them. It’s not about the execution of precise, clinical music. It’s about the feeling - raw, noisy, sloppy aggression and this is where this disc gets it perfect. This probably doesn’t have a lot of replay value over time as it’s one of those records that are like, “here it is, this is it. Boom”. But I don’t think that these guys ever intended this to be considered a classic or anything. Nor do they care.

If you’ve already heard music that was released by a project that was in the Black Legions (LLN) then you pretty much already know what this demo sounds like. For those who haven’t had their ears raped by a LNN project then this demo is a good place to start.

The production is quite decent, for an LNN release that is. The guitar sound could be compared to Graveland’s “In the Glare of Burning Churches” album. The drums on this demo sound very interesting. Cymbal clashes are swallowed by the guitars hiss and the drum hits have that “tin can” quality. The kick drums actually sound like “synth zaps” and add that needed uniqueness to this recording. Vocals are nothing special, just the usual distorted yells. Bass is actually audible if you focus on it.

The actual music is very primitive but melodic, not as melodic as Vlad Tepes though. This demo gives off a nice Punk vibe that gets your head banging which is always a good thing in my books. Blast-beats are rare and there is little Tremolo Picking to be heard. There are nice parts where the kick drums actually carry the music along and are the highlights of this recording. The intro and outro are nothing to right home about, just the usual spoken word with haunting synth playing in the background.

If you want 13 minutes of competent Black Metal that gets straight to the point and blasts your eardrums with evil riffs that will get your head banging then seek this demo out.