Demoncy – Black Star Gnosis

If anything, Demoncy is a band that seems to work in short and unexpected outbursts of creativity. In their early days since their inception in the late 80’s the band has been working on a steady pace and even releasing two full-length albums in 1999, but then the fickleness start to set in. It took the band four years to follow those early records up only to keep quiet for almost a decade. And now, anno 2023, the band all of a sudden re-emerges with again two almost simultaneously released offerings.

First up is this sixth album and while creativity might come and go like some sort of slow-motion tidal wave, the music on offer is as steady as you can get it. Ever since their early days Demoncy has been upholding the pride of American Black Metal in a stubborn regressive manner. Throughout the band’s long history they have delivered a few albums that can be seen as less essential, but the mark that the band left on the American Black Metal (USBM) scene with their 1993 ‘Faustian Dawn’-demo or the two debut albums from 1999 is unmistakable.

The non-existent musical progression displayed on ‘Black Star Gnosis’ means that Demoncy still sounds as vile and nefarious as ever before, finding itself amongst the fellow originators of the genre. If anything ‘Black Star Gnosis’ sounds like a genuine nightmarish homage to yesteryear’s Black Metal, just like their brothers in arms such as Profanatica, Blasphemy and Beherit. Aside for the ambient/spacey horror intro, some intermezzo and outro this is a thoroughly riff-based affair that fluently flows between slow, dragging doomy parts and more up-beat savagery.

Compared to the previous two albums, 2012’s ‘Enthroned Is The Night’ and ‘Empire Of The Fallen Angel (Eternal Black Dominion)’ from 2015, ‘Black Star Gnosis’ sounds more dense and the guitars tend to go back down in terms of rawness. This makes this newest album to sound even closer to Beherit’s ‘Drawing Down The Moon’ but with a slightly updated production, yet without compromising on its crude character. Demoncy turns out to be of a rare breed, still hailing that old Beherit spirit, including those hissing and whispering vocals and oppressive atmosphere, just like a band like Void Meditation Cult (before known as Sperm Of Antichrist) for instance also had. Fodder for the true connoisseur with an ardour for the old and the wicked.

People who have been following Demoncy over the past years (or decades) will not be disappointed by ‘Black Star Gnosis’, the band remains to be true to themselves and the musical course chose over 30 years ago. In the unlikely case you are encountering the band for the first time, this new album is a perfect way to get acquainted with Demoncy: it is not as rough as some of their earlier stuff but has the old school DNA written all over it.