DEVASTATOR - Conjuring Evi

Rating: 9.0

Country: USA

Release Date: 2008

Track list:
1. Ye Incantation / Conjuring Evil
2. Vengeance of Death
3. The Devil's Mark
4. PAZUZU, Demon of Plagues
5. Ceremony of the Ancients
6. Worship the Gibbous Moon
7. Summon the Night
8. Third Dynasty of UR

Total playing time 49:12

Band Website: Devastator

Devastator - Conjuring Evil

Adrian - Guitars
Wulfnoth - Vocals
Laz - Bass
Pest - Drums
Alaric - Guitars

In 2000, a FPS called Perfect Dark was released. With the framerate of a 1930s claymation dinosaur, it's obviously considered crappy by today's standards, but its multiplayer mode still managed to elicit a few cheap thrills, granted you had a friend with poor enough spending habits to own an N64. Anyway, in the game's unbalanced weapon selection, there was a grenade launcher called the devastator. While grenade launchers often tend to be a clumsy affair in games, the grenades themselves often possessing the inconvenient habit of ricocheting off walls and exploding in your face, this particular weapon had a versatile secondary function that protected the player from such a scenario: that of firing grenades that stuck to solid surfaces until detonation. For example, let's say some asshole is chasing you down a corridor while shooting at you (a much more dire problem than this sudden tense shift); plant a grenade on the wall as you run, and you can take him out without even having to turn around. The purpose of this tortured analogy, I suppose, is to illustrate that just like its 64-bit name-sharing counterpart, with each release, Devastator prove to be anything but unreliable.

With the chief influences of their blackened thrash including Sodom, Venom and Bathory, Devastator have a good formula, and they're clearly inclined to stick to it. The riffs occasionally veer off into some frantic Bay Area atonality, but for the most part the songs inhabit the realm of early European thrash, complete with the obligatory dialogue of squealing axe duels. The lyrics are still harmlessly blasphemous, with songs about legions of Hell, Sumerian mythology, and other traditional metal stuff, full of illuminating insight such as: "The venom of horror will tear up your spine / Bang your heads for Lucifer!" Indeed. Vilkacis' acidic bark is similarly pretty much the same, even going as far as to recycle old vocal patterns (throaty snarl/cleaner ascending line/"ungh!" and/or "uwaaaah!"), which isn't really a complaint, as he still sounds sufficiently petulant and snide. Devastator are also beginning to broaden the contemporary black metal element of their sound with the inclusion of more linear tremolo picking -- refreshingly, not relegating such moments to melodic bridges or something, but rather incorporating them into the context of their thrashier sections without compromising the album's nostalgic oldschool appeal.

The drums are exceedingly untight for a thrash album, especially during the sloppily sustained lengthier sections of blasting (the best example being the first twenty-five seconds of the not spectacularly named "The Devil's Mark"; tck-tck-tck...tck...tck-tck...). While so-called Pest is surely no human metronome, it would be pedantic to fault Conjuring Evil too harshly on the fact, as his spastic fills and dramatic crash cymbal accents perpetually highlight the human element of the album.

As far as production goes, although the guitar tone could still use a little more volume over the vocals, it's adequately sharp and abrasive. It would, however, be nice if the bass was more prominent. The propulsive bass line opening the song "Pazuzu" rules, so it's a bit disappointing that it never audibly interacts with the riffs once they storm in.

So overall, this is pretty much more of the same from Devastator, right? Yes, except one prudent decision on their part, and this is key: those Rotting Christ keyboards I bitched about in my Morbid Force review are gone. Aside from some ambience underpinning the pensively minimalistic The Exorcist-ish dirge of "Ceremony of the Ancients" (which is a surprisingly competent piano piece for a disposable intermezzo on an album with lyrics about sodomy), Conjuring Evil is mercifully synth-free. While some thrash bands are overtly self-conscious about attacking the listener with a sexually-frustrated barrage of "RIFFS UP THE ASS \m/" or whatever, Devastator are superior when they isolate a couple particularly hippie-stomping riffs per song and spend the tracks exploring variations of them, and the omission of distracting keys benefits this formula impeccably.

This is music for real men who eat In Flames fans for brunch (because brunch ist krieg) and floss their teeth with barbed wire. Sure, Conjuring Evil is nothing original by any means, but the notion that anything "original" exists under the sun is a philosophical impossibility; what matters is whether or not it's quality metal, which it is.

April 23rd, 2008