Siegehammer – Demo MMXXIII [Demo / Re-Release]

You can already tell from the title of this demo that we are dealing with a reissue of these recordings. We are now a year on, but Profaner Records apparently liked this demo well enough to give it a second life, after the band had already made a version on cassette tape circulating some months before. This new version follows fairly swiftly after the latest demo/EP ‘Spectral Entities’, which was released recently and has now also received a physical edition via Gurgling Gore.

Those who have heard ‘’Spectral Entities’ might be in for a little surprise with ‘Demo MMXXIII’ as these first recordings are far more crude and unpolished than what the band came up with later on. There is very little of that Rottrevore/Incantation vibe that typified ‘Spectral Entities’, instead the band sounds chaotic on these three first tracks. Consequently the band has more in common with a Death Metal-driven Sadistik Exekution, Vomitor and Angelcorpse: loud, wild and with an unbridled, infectious enthusiasm. The reverbed vocals are the icing to the cake and makes it sound even more primal and savage in nature. But to just label them as a chaos-ridden Death Metal band is a bit too easy as there clearly is a certain edge of Black Metal in the overall feeling and, most strikingly, in the closing ‘Eternal Torture’ the band slows down and finds itself in almost doomy territories.

The slightly rougher frame in which the music is poured works remarkably well and results in a demo that is very much worth picking up for those who like their Death Metal intense and stormy, free from all bells and whistles. In other words: in the old school way. While I also liked the band’s latest offering, I would definitely pick this first demo over ‘Spectral Entities’.