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Deivos > Hostile Blood > Reviews
Deivos - Hostile Blood

Fresh blood in early 00's death metal!!!!! - 70%

dismember_marcin, October 29th, 2012

Deivos is a band, which nowadays is well established, having three full length albums under their belt. Recently, after I got the band’s latest CD, “Demiurge of the Void”, I also decided to give a spin to “Hostile Blood”, a demo or EP from 2003, which I remember I got from Deivos at that time. I wanted to listen to it, because honestly, despite the fact that I remember rating it quite high in my fanzine, I think I also did not actually listen to it for the last eight years or so. So, definitely the achievement of the third album was a good stimulating point to refresh my memories of “Hostile Blood”. And I must say that when I listen to this demo nowadays I am really impressed by it. I mean it does sound excellent, especially if you think that in 2003 a completely unknown band managed not only to achieve such a good and professional production, but also composed such a challenging, but brutal and well developed piece of death metal. I am almost as impressed as I was, when I was listening to Deception’s demos at the same time (and Deception is also Polish, what is really great!).

The music on “Hostile Blood” do not sound as 100% matured as from the bands like Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Sinister, etc – which would be some of the names, to which you could compare them to. Deivos still was in their infancy pretty much, having only one demo prior to “Hostile Blood” (“Praised by Generations” from 1999), but having that in mind I must say that the technical aspects of this 2003 release are very impressing. Each Deivos members impresses with good technical skills, and that includes damn fast and technical drumming as well as very good bassist’s playing, who comes up with really cool bass parts here and there (which would sometimes sound like from Death’s “Individual Thought Patters”)… And on top of all that – plus the very good sound of this demo – I must admit that the songs are really cool. Even for someone, who may not be 100% fan of technical death metal, they sound good. Deivos did not only focus on technical show off, but also remembered about having as many memorable parts as possible and not just blasts like crazy, but has quite many mid tempo fragments and especially if you listen to “Scarcity of Suffering” it may impress you a lot, with how this song sounds like and how it is built plus what type of riffing, guitar leads, etc. it has. Hmm, I dare to say that it is very rare to hear something so excellently composed from such a young band as Deivos were at that time. At few occasions the band comes up with more complex and technical as hell structures, breaking the riffs and rhythms in the way, which I am not usually a big fan of, but as I already said luckily they never “out do” that, if you know what I mean. And I mean that there’s no feeling of technical masturbation and of too many riffs and sounds per minute, which definitely is good, and that way the music remains memorable and maybe not catchy, but definitely is more straight forward. But you can be sure that the whole music is very tight, very brutal and massive. I do am impressed with such tracks as “Hostile Blood” and the mentioned “Scarcity of Suffering”.

So, I can definitely say that “Hostile Blood” survived the test of time very well. It is really good material, so it is worth to be looked for. I have the first press self released CDR copy, but I know that the Bulgarian Butchery Music re-released it on CD with a couple of demo tracks, so you may be luckily and still find a copy of it somewhere.

Not yet matured. - 62%

Harachte, October 24th, 2004

I had never heard of the band Deivos, However, the word ‘deivos’ did ring a bell. A quick search through some specific literature learned that the very ancient Indo-European word ‘deivos’ meant something like ‘heavenly’, from which the word ‘Dyaus’ was derived (compare this to ‘Zeus’ or ‘Dyaus Pitar’ [‘heavenly father’], hence ‘Jupiter’). Well, that is more interesting than the usual ‘blood ‘n gore’-theme, isn’t it?
So much for the crash course in mythology for dummies, however interesting, and let’s move on the music.

Deivos (the band) hails from Poland and has been in existence for four years or so. After one demo (“Praised by Generations”) and some line-up changes the band took it upon itself to record five tracks earlier this year which came to the attention of the Bulgarian Butchery Music-label. This label offered the band a deal and released the five tracks onto CD, together with two demo tracks. So “Hostile Blood” isn’t exactly a real full-length.

Deivos plays technical death metal which is reminiscent of bands like Vader and Morbid Angel. At least, that’s what they say. I, however, think that is a bit too much exaggeration because although the instrumental skills are present and play an important part, I miss the brutality of Vader and the sheer madness of Morbid Angel.
What does Deivos do instead? Well, apart from tight played death metal the band offers sometimes hyperfast blastbeats, a fair amount of (not always too transparent) variety and not too mediocre vocals. Unfortunately, the way in which the five tracks are produced isn’t the best I heard in ways of catching one’s attention quickly. This kind of metal needs a brutal, transparent sound in order to blister through one’s speakers so to speak.

However, this production is of almost godly status compared to the sound of the two demo tracks which were recorded with a drumcomputer… boy, do they sound bad!
The single most important feature which could have been more prominent on “Hostile Blood” is a more obstinate approach to already old themes and song structures: Deivos’s music should have owned a more personal approach. And nothing from what I heared did rise above the rest, which is a must when one plays such diverse music.
Let’s just say that the potention is present but needs a lot of maturing.

The mediocre score is reminiscent of the crappy sounding demo tracks which really dragged things down, as opposed to the five, not quite matured tracks.