“Storm the Gates of Hell” is the title for the latest album from the Metal band, Demon Hunter. I had quite high expectations for their newest album since I loved the previous one (The Triptych). I got the ‘Special Edition’ of the album as I like to watch interviews with the band members and hear their commentary about the album. What follows are some thoughts from a fan so it might not exactly be a dispassionate critique of the pros and cons of the musical complexities expressed in this album. So here we go…
One thing that impresses me of this band is the whole presentation of the album. The covers and the booklets are well designed. The cover design is a departure from the conventional CD cover design (a positively artistic departure at that):
I like how the cover opens like a door; Hell’s door with the logo of the hunted demon on it. The demon is ‘hunted’ because of a hole in its head–presumably made by the Hunter’s weapon. I liked the symbolisms. As you open the doors you see a statement on the inside of the doors…
“Hell Hath No Fury At All”
I liked the very bold statement. This statement of rebellion to dark forces is very appealing in the midst of bands that sing about embracing darkness. The irony is that those bands that sing about embracing darkness started out as a rebellion themselves! Now there are so much of them that they are the “mainstream” and bands like Demon Hunter are the rebels!
All this prepared me for the sonic pleasure that awaited. As usual, I played the CD in my home theatre and the first song was “Storm the Gates of Hell”. The start sounded like the stampede of the hunters and the hunted but what followed it could only be best described in the words of the bassist, “…pure aggression from beginning to end, no ceasing, no letting up, no choruses, not giving you chance to breathe…y’know just pummeling from beginning to end…”. Nearing the end of the song, the phrase “Hell hath no fury at all” was screamed/growled by the lead singer Ryan Clark with ’squealies’ flying off the guitars like arrows in the background. It…was…pure headbanging awesomeness. A phrase like that found its ultimate expression from the mouth of Ryan Clark. It really does makes one think, “Hell hath no fury at all”, indeed. Oh yeah, I was screaming it in my mind too since I did not want to ruin Ryan’s vocal performance by doing it audibly myself. 
The song “Sixteen” captured my interest. It had guest vocals from Bruce Fitzhugh of Living Sacrifice. The vocals by him reminded me of the album Burning Bridges by Haste the Day. It was different and dare I say a bit refreshing as well. This type of growling is one of the deepest and darkest form of vocals I have heard. When a whole album is comprised of vocals with only one type of vocal style it would get rather monotonous and grow stale before you know it. The original vocal style would then quickly become unoriginal. However, employed like in the song “Sixteen” it adds to the texture of the song very well while maintaining variety. Read the rest of this entry »
