OneMetal.com REVIEW:
Perversor – Demon Metal

It’s when I receive CDs like this that I kinda hate the arbitrary numerical ranking system at the end of these reviews. With only 10 numbers to choose from, how do I manage to accurately sum up my impressions towards this, a relentlessly savage, almost aggressively unaccessible release from a group of Chilean black/thrashers? When the music blaring from the speakers seems almost to be daring the listener to be metal enough to enjoy the band creating such a cacophonic frenzy, do I give it a ’4 out of 5′ and prove my metal credentials in the form of a rating that says “I’m sufficiently metal to love this, and you should too”, or consider the wider audience and give it a lesser mark that says “sure, it’s intense, but the near sociopathic disregard for accessibility means it’s probably not for everyone”?

Okay – you people reading this probably have no idea what I’m talking about here. ‘Demon Metal’ is an 18-minute long clinic in rapid-fire savagery, combining the anti-social nihilism and lo-fi production values of old-school black metal with the frantic, unrelenting pace of classic thrash metal. It’s an exhiliratingly physical experience, akin to standing in a wind tunnel being bombarded by shards of white-hot shrapnel, with barely a let-up in the assault (save occasional respites like the brief mid-tempo bludgeon closing out second track ‘Victory of the Legions of the Damned’). The vocals, strangled forth with envenomed spite, are drenched in cavernous reverb and mixed right up front, making them near-unintelligible and also making the instrumentation difficult to discern. The drum kit is blurry and indistinct, a constant whirlwind of frantic kicks and near-inaudible snares, while the buzzsawing guitars vomit firth an unending array of cylconic riffage. This music is hard to listen to – like the band are actively weeding out the unworthy amongst their audience, cloaking their riffage and musicality beneath a veil of poser-weeding extremity.

The extreme brevity of the EP is ideal – such unswerving dedication to the tenets of metallic excess, whilst undeniably invigorating, could easily overstay what limited welcome it might have to even the tr00-est, kvltest listener if pushed beyond, say, twenty minutes or so. In fact, ‘Demon Metal’ reminds me of releases by Western Canadian extremists Revenge, in that on the surface, the music is pretty much exactly what mainstream music fans imagine when they think of ‘metal’ – all violent, chaotic bluster, amelodic and inacessible – yet this doesn’t feel like contrived, piss-take extremism. There are riffs here, and a structure, and the absolutely unabashed approach to face-in-the-furnace, full-blown extremity sounds less like a group of ironic hipsters saying “Yeah, let’s release the most unmusical, underproduced slab of noise ever – those idiot metal kids will eat it up”, and more like a bunch of genuine metal fans getting together over a shared appreciation of all things fast and heavy, and pushing themselves to one-up all others in both respects.

So, going back to the numerical rating – I can tell you now, the arbitrary number stamped at the bottom of the review will tell you nothing. The only true way to gauge whether ‘Demon Metal’ is for you is the same way everyone should judge all music; listen to it for yourself. Undoubtedly, for some this will be a screeching, confusing racket, whereas for others, it will be a revelatory windstorm of metallic shock-and-awe. As for myself? I’m gonna go stick my head back in the oven for another 18 minutes.

Perversor profile at Hell’s Headbangers (samples available): http://perversor.hellsheadbangers.com/
Hell’s Headbangers Website: http://www.hellsheadbangers.com/

Bottom Line

To some, 'Demon Metal' will be a laughably juvenile exercise in metallic cliché - to others, a refreshingly unhinged slab of hyperspeed blackened thrash. A truly polarising record.