DEMONCY
DEMONCY “Black Star Gnosis”
By Dr. Abner Mality
These evil bastards have been invoking dark powers for decades now but have flown under the radar of all but the most cultish devotees of evil. Along with PROFANATICA and VON, they play very stripped down, repetitious black metal of a primitive nature. Yet they haven’t gotten the notoriety of those other two bands, despite being at this for just as long.
First thing they do here is waste three minutes of my time with a dumb ambient intro. I’m sure they feel it is vitally important to the overall album, but I don’t. Better for an outfit like this to just strike right away with force and get on with it. DEMONCY is somewhat similar to war metal like BLASPHEMY and BLACK WITCHERY, but with a slower, less volcanic pace that gives a true feeling of doom. This has nothing to do with the trebly “wintry” black metal of Scandinavia. The guitar sound is thick and warm, the sound natural.
Where DEMONCY really stands out is the weird vocal stylings of singer and high priest Ixithra. This guy will give even hardened black metal listeners the creeps, with a whispery, corpse-like quaver that just sounds like pure fuckin’ evil. It takes music that is dark and makes it absolutely pitch black BEHERIT tried something similar, but these guys do it better than anyone. As for the songs, they are all pretty uniform except we get two more “ambient” tracks, both of which are better and more involved than that intro. Some bands use boring dungeon synth….DEMONCY does something more akin to ritual sounds with gargoyle-like vocals.
It is not perfect, but very potent in its blackened way. The kind of music you’d put on to chase METALLICA and MEGADETH fans out of the room. Reviewed on Halloween with freezing winds blowing outside!