Search - 1349 :: Demonoir

1349 is Aural Hellfire

Nick Danger | Manchester, England | 04/27/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"


Following on from last years somewhat disappointing `Revelations of the Black Flame' Norway's finest 1349 serve up album No 5- Demonoir. The album features six songs and seven short interludes numbered 1 through 7 the first of which introduces the LP and the last plays it out with the rest segued between each of the songs. So how does Demonoir rate? Let's investigate...



Atomic Chapel (6:24) Ravn exhales and the music begins. Archaon's guitar sounds meaty and dry and Frost shifts back and forth between fast drum speed 1 and blastbeats as Ravn whispers vocals over the top. Then it's rapid fills and Archaon switching into a cascading riff. The track then continues to slow and at 0.38 settles into a sedated almost hypnotic groove with Ravn providing spoken vocals, whispers & the usual grim throat. As the track meditates on this riff at 2:29 you can hear some eastern styled strings playing over the top of the band which sit perfectly with other instruments. These strings seem to linger as the track returns to the blasting. The remainder of the song is all blastbeats and fury with a mixture of dry throat, whispers and towards the end some almost monk style vocals. A great song that features memorable riffs and highlights the bands musical progression.

10/10



When I was Flesh (5:45) This one is ferocious and one of my favorites on the album. WIWF could have come from any of the first three albums as it is played in the classic 1349 style of all blasting all the time- almost continuous blastbeats. Churning riffs fused to hyper speed rhythms are built atop of each other in which Frost uses two different blastbeat speeds (one ultra fast, one standard DM blastbeat speed) and a slower but still fast mid tempo snare beat for the chorus, all the while underpinned by relentless super fast double bass drums. Then it's back to the blasting. Overall a great classic style 1349 song and there are some nice growled overdubs at the end. Too bad the drums are not that clear. This production does not suit blastbeats that well.

9/10



Psalm 7:77 (5:42) begins with Archaon fading in and then a guitar/tom section before some rapid fills as the band shifts up and the blasting commences. The first two minutes are high speed sonic battery with Ravn spewing venom over the top. Ravn's vocals on Demonoir are mostly in the standard BM style- dry throated & bestial. At 2:53 Archaon rips a solo that reminds me of one of those early eighties thrash solos as it sounds a little like something from Kill Em All or Show No Mercy. The lead guitar then fades out and drifts around in the background behind the vocals before a second solo which is pretty bizarre sounding. The track ends in familiar brutal fashion switching from blastbeats into a neat drum fill with an extended scream.

8/10



Pandemonium War Bells (7:48) Another great song. It's blasting from the get go as Archaon quickly exchanges crunching riffs for introverted sections and back again. Frost effortlessly changes tempo as the song gets gradually slower leading into a breakdown at 2:44. Later on Ravn's vocals take on a droning spoken style against the grinding rhythms that recalls Attila Csihar. Truly an unholy racket and it sounds great. At 5:08 the drums fall away to a plodding beat as Archaon emits a tortured solo. The last minute begins with just symbols and the feint beginnings of a riff. Later the blastbeats return with a gloomy riff that ushers in the end of the track.

8/10



The Devil of the Deserts (6:30) This one really highlights the bands progression in song writing and their ability to think outside of the box. It begins in traditional hyper speed style and features a kick ass riff that is all up and down the fret while Ravn's vocals sound particularly foul like something that has died. There is also a real morbid and desperate feeling. The mid paced mid section morphs into tunneling riffs then incredible bass drums and more of Ravn's monk style vocals with ridiculous fills and bass drums mixed in. Frost is quite amazing in this one. Towards the end the song returns to full speed and at 5:47 blastbeats erupt to join the final tunneling riff as a piano piece plays out the fading chaos and it all sounds quite superb.

10/10



Demonoir (6:19) The final song on the album is the slow one and features no blasting. Ravn's barks are grim and nasty and Archaon's haunting riffs sit well with the multiple tortured voices you can make out in the background. It sounds like a particularly nasty haunting has taken root in the studio, I guess that is what they were going for. This is the weakest track on the album. Not because it does not feature any blastbeats but because it is simply the least interesting and keeps to the same riffs/tempo throughout. Despite this it is still cool track.

7/10



Some people will say this is a return to form or that the band is trying to fix their wrongs, but it's not like they ever lost the ability to create super charged black metal. I get the impression they make the type of music they want to regardless of what anyone thinks. The ambient tracks in-between each of the songs work much better this time than on ROTBF. This time they have a purpose in that they either morph one song into the next or create anticipation between tracks. And because they are short and evenly spliced throughout, they make the album feel balanced. Having said this I still could have done without out them and would have preferred the six songs on their own. I guess I'm a traditionalist like that.



This is a great Black Metal album. It's the album that ROTBF should have been. It displays an evolution and maturing of songwriting without losing the speed and brutality of the first three albums. You can tell by listening to it once that a lot of talent & consideration has gone into making these songs just by the amount of layers that sometimes feature in tracks without them feeling cluttered, or the way they have seamlessly incorporated non-BM sounds into songs with them sounding perfectly at home such as the oriental styled strings in `Atomic Chapel' or the way a piano solo dances elegantly over Frost's muted blastbeats in `The Devil Of The Desert'. This album reminds me of Mayhem's Ordo Ad Chao in that the band have explored the perimeters of the genre and really pushed themselves to make something not only great but also original.



Is there anything wrong with this album? Well, I'm afraid the production lets the record down. Unfortunately Demonoir suffers from the same production issues as ROTBF, namely the drums. On BTA and Hellfire the drums were perfectly crisp and audible and both albums still retained a raw black metal sound. Even on their super raw debut album- Liberation the drums were clear and easy to make out. But on Demonoir the drum sound is very dampened, and at times- particularly during blastbeats, the snare often merges into the guitars and on occasion becomes barely detectable! It's a real shame because Frosts drumming is obviously one of the highlights of the bands sound; many would say he is THE focal point of the music so for his drumming on this album to be weakened by a production that strips it of a lot of its ferocity & clarity rather than enhancing it is a crime. Particularly so considering the super human performance he once again turns in on this album. This wall of sound style of production does have a certain charm, but on high speed Black Metal it is not best suited.



Demonoir is a killer album with 1349 at the top of their game somewhat let down by a less than ideal production. The cover painting is really cool too. At first glance it looks like an abstract piece but if you inspect it further you can make out a set of eyes and a tortured face and who knows what else. I rate this album 9/10.

"

Not this time.....

Michael Wood | Colorado, USA | 05/05/2010

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Okay.......first off, I already had a feeling that 1349 would never ever be able to come close to matching the masterpiece that, for me, was Revelations of the Black Flame. That one album contained everything that they needed to express to the world as a collective artist. If you're reading this, and basically hate that album and love their back catalogue (which I find to be boring and uninspired) then stop reading this, for it will only infuriate you.



The two stars are for the most part two reasons. One, I have much respect for Frost. Love Satyricon to death, and 1349 has given him an outlet to speed things up lately. Two, there are really only two guitar moments on this disc worth mentioning, and they are the sporadic creative melodies in Atomic Chapel and the brutal/technical/death metal styled riff here and there in Psalm 7:77.



That's about it. Half this album is what frustrates me, and what I mean by half the album is not in mere length, but the number of tracks. 7 tracks are merely useless ambient noise and serve as generic breaks between the tracks, while the other 6 tracks are blast beats with riffs already known to fans of 1349 prior to Revelations. For a continuing title to sound and suggest something as cool as "Tunnel of Set", I seriously expected more from those numbers. Honestly, I feel that they were trying to combine their traditional fan base of the Hellfire days with the recent (that would include me) listeners who fell in love with the innovative and unorthodox stylings of Revelations. In this aspect, they failed miserably. At least on Revelations, if you wish to hate all the slow, quiet moments, go right ahead, but one must admit that they each had their own sound to them.



Once again, this review will most likely be in the minority, since I still don't understand what all the hype surrounding Hellfire and older material is all about. Nonstop blasbeats.....and it's all been done before. Black metal today shouldn't be about holding to tradition. That's what we have Burzum, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Darkthrone, etc for. If they want to continue along their non-evolving, sleeping aide paths, so be it. Glimmers of how black metal can truly transform itself into what was heard on Revelations, as well as other albums here and there. Demonoir just doesn't cut it. Of course, that's, in my opinion, what material sounds like only a year after you've released your previous album.

"