Finland's Demilich formed in 1990, releasing only one full-length, 1993's Nespithe, before breaking up and fading into the swampy coldness of the Finnish landscape. Finland produced some rather unnerving and left-of-centre death-metal bands in the 90's - the likes of Demigod, Adramelech, Convulse, Funebre, Abhorrence, Depravity and many more meshing technical flavorings with razor-sharp old-school death and abhorrent and often weird morbid themes.
Spasmodic, rhythmically irregular, jarring with gurgled vocals tremble beneath the music like something slimy disfigured creature from the deep, Demilich were truly an anomaly. There's a bizarre angularity to their sound that sounds genuinely alien - a slimy, crushing, pulsating approach oozing eccentricity. Masked underneath this unearthly multi-dimensional monstrosity are flecks of muddy old-school death-metal - the occasional dissonant solo and spurts of intense blasts and quick fire riffs and melodies. Nespithe doesn't shy away from melody either, although the melodies travel through more unconventional wires. The jarring rhythmical approach resulted in some of the most mesmeric riffs and repetitions I've heard - every songs seems to share a particular thread or pattern that runs from the beginning through to the end, the album has an incredibly satisfying flow.
Conceptually, the album artwork and lyrics are a perfect extension of their sound - with hyper-detailed song titles like 'The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired...)' and 'The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed)' and 'The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity (...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness...)' basic cavemen-death grooves and themes are nowhere to be seen or heard in this ultra-weird vomit-infested sun-crushing alternate universe.
Nespithe is one of the albums I can listen to over and over again and never get tired, there's always something odd - be it a stray bass-line, a partiular riff-pattern, or a particular noise that rises from the tangled 'fourteen four-regional dimensions' - that hooks me in. Part of Demilich's cult status is gathered from how they faded away right after Nespithe; they're touring again now and I'm sure their shows would be incredible.
No comments:
Post a Comment