Swedish. Death. Metal. Hell yeah? Now get the album?! No, wait... Let's get under the skin of Daemonicus, who now presents their debut album 'Host of Rotting Flesh', after their formation in 2006 and three demos.

We are now talking about the true Swedish death metal, not any teen-angst-breaking-out-in-thirties type untrue shite. Here it's all about mortuaries, bloodsheds, undead and plagues. And shite, of course. Surely, 'Host of Rotting Flesh' is not able to conjure up the similar magical feelings as those old legendary bands did with their legendary songs and albums. But that would be too big a presumption anyway. The songs are built up of familiar riffage and horror melodies. Sometimes the riffing is evil 'n' eerie, sometimes more groovy. Some of the riffs work, some don't, then the majority of them are just average. The songs aren't as predictable as one would think them to be, because Daemonicus have been able to throw in some small surprises along the way.

Performance-wise this is partly on a novice-level, partly on a higher level. The guitars and the bass, as well as low growled vocals work well enough. On the slower parts, the band sound tighter than during mostly powerless fast parts. The drums are just lame at the faster tempos. But, there could be one thing affecting to this, and it is the production. One things that's not from six feet under, is the sound. While you can hear the bass playing, and there's plenty of double kick drumming, the guitars are simply so thin that this sounds limp. No fucking way with a death metal album! While the snare drum sounds truly lame, the balancing of the instruments is okay, and the band have clearly aimed for rusty 'n' rotting soundscape. But as it is, this sounds like a cheap demo, not a brutal attacking monster of an album. It was probably done with a pea soup can budget. The cover artwork is certainly different and pretty eye-catching, at least its eyesore colour scheme is. I guess it does its job, then.

Daemonicus are young as the band, and still too inexperienced for a debut album. This shows especially in the lame delivery and the sound. While the songs have some good stuff in them, they are just not so finely built up. Too many times I lost my interest during a song, just to be waken up by a cool part. Just about the third of the songs can called as fluid and sort of successful. There are lot of trials for the band to overcome before they can climb up to the b-class death metal bands. So, there's a target for the next output, then.

Rating: 5 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
05/21/2009 20:43