What happens when black metallers quit their old band and form a new one, playing death metal? They start playing death metal with a strong black metal feeling to it. That's what happened to four Tunrida guys, who in 2006 decided to take a new musical direction. They were joined by Darcasis vocalist, and Devil's Advocates were born. In 2010 they released their debut album 'Merchant of Death'.

Devil's Advocates trust to simplistic, to the point tactics. The songwriting embodies old values from 1980's and 1990's. A few riffs per song and probably a lead guitar melody or two. Some of the lead guitar work reminds me of old Amorphis, their debut album 'The Karelian Isthmus' era (1992). And generally, the music reminds heavily of Finnish underground black/death bands from 1990's. Slithering 'Visions for no Man to See' is easily the best song here. It simply manages to hit the gold vein with its perfect atmosphere. It also is the slowest song on the album. With faster songs, the band cannot achieve required intensity, but rarely (happens on punky Impaled Nazarene stinking 'Feast of the Christian Flesh', for example). So, the killer riffs and stuff are badly missing. The vocalist's high-pitched croaking with bad pronunciation does not really fit with the music, even though he puts his soul into it with all sounds he's uttering. The lyrics are partly working usually when having black humour in them. Usually they are too blunt, even though might have interesting horror ('Visions for...'), social ('Disgusted (by Your Faith)') or just fucked up (e.g. 'Feast of...') topics.

The production job is one thing to blame for the effectiveness. The sound is so feeble and flat, that it is totally wrong for music like this. First, more power, a lot of it! Now, it doesn't manage to be punchy enough. Especially guitars sound too tame. There is no sense of danger in them, and would profit from rawer tones, I believe. Graphics-wise this looks better than many label outputs do.

With these buidling blocks the band simply end up sounding lukewarm. The main point of interest is the style of their music, which lacks of every new trend since 1995. The execution just doesn't cut it. Maybe with a better sound the riffs would've sounded more lethal, hard to say. It leaves me quite cold now, but surely with this kind of style, the band could be much more hellish. Let's see next time around...

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
02/15/2011 18:46