The Batlord

Demo Today Gone Tomorrow: I Couldn't Think of Anything More Clever - Part I

Well, I rather enjoyed the pre-Electric Wizard demo bits, and I felt like listening to a bunch of old demo only metal bands today, so I'm gonna try to talk about/find some that don't suck...

Necrovore: Divus de Mortuus - 1987

This is probably one of the most famous demo only bands in the history of metal, if not the most famous. A good place to start this shindig.




Around the mid to late eighties the line between black, death, and thrash metal could be pretty thin. I'd say that Necrovore were poster boys for this, except that a lot of these kinds of bands back then all pretty much sounded the same. Necrovore could probably fall into any of these three categories, but I imagine they would fall more onto the death metal side of the spectrum. They remind me of the vicious attack of Kreator's Pleasure to Kill, and the chaos and noise of Possessed's Seven Churches. I imagine that these probably were some of their main influences considering that these two albums both dropped within two years of this band's only demo.

Divus de Mortuus is pretty much what I just described. It's pretty fucking noisy first of all. This band doesn't really go in for subltey. So long as asses are kicked and amps are destroyed I imagine they are pretty happy. The demo quality production only makes it more so. Given that this is ugly, sloppy pre-death metal, that isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. What makes this more than just an exercise in brainless noise though is the sheer energy on display that demands that your head bang. Listening to this I can really imagine these guys just destroying some shitty hole-in-the-wall bar with twenty denim and mullet-clad neanderthals beating the shit out of each other in front of them. It's not going to be to everyone's taste, but to those who dig this kinda thing, it's pretty cool.

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