Saturday 22 October 2011

Deathronation - A Soil Forsaken

Deathronation - A Soil Forsaken (Self release - demo 2006)
Man, it seems like finally the German scene has found its way out of the abyss of mediocrity and spawned some great death metal bands, because in my opinion since Morgoth and Fleshcrawl there were only few black metal acts that I really liked and almost none death metal ones, but that has changed with the likes of Necros Christos, Mandatory or Obscure Infinity. And now also Deathronation, although this demo release from 2006 hasn't really shown the whole potential from this band.
I don't remember how many bands have already used the "Exorcist" movie for the intro on their recordings, Deathronation is yet another one, but I like it - you know, the part with "we are the ones who dwell within" always give me goose skin. But there's no time to think about it, because "Realm Of Shadows" starts. Hmm, I must say that the music captured my attention right away, despite the fact that sound quality is rather mediocre and it brings very messy and chaotic feeling to the music, succesfully "killing" some riffs, making them rather unreadable. Anyway, this is old school metal demo and so you shouldn't expect it to have the production like the mainstream bands have and besides, as for a rehearsal recording, it doesn't sound so terrible as you would think.
Musically Deathronation slaughters with a rotten, obscure death metal, in this particular song ("Realm Of Shadows") it has many resemblences to bands like old Destroyer 666 - with the death / thrash metal riffing, as well as Throneum and Necros Christos (mainly the atmosphere)... And I think these two bands may be some of the most essential influences for Deathronation, but not only, as it also brings the memory of certain legendary bands like Sarcofago, Incantation, even Blasphemy, and even more importantly, it has the same feeling, which you can find on some South American recordings. So, imagine dirty, unpolished, totally morbid and chaotic death metal, mixed with some parts of black and thrash...
I must say that the most interesting are the parts, when Deathronation slows down their music, like in the "Curse From The Grave", which has fantastic opening riff, as well as the opening theme for "Beyond Revelation". From the other hand the fast parts sound very chaotic and primitive, almost archaic, with the badly played drums and then you can also spot all the faults of the production of the demo - well, just listen to the "Beyond Revelation" for the example. I must say that this song, as well as "Marooned" for instance can easily be labelled as death / black metal, as the atmosphere on them is totally primitive and obscure and the vocals are closer to the black metal screams than typical death growls.
Anyway, I definitely enjoyed listening to "A Soil Forsaken...", even though at the same time I can say there are some things, which I would like to be done better, but the overall atmosphere and the feeling in this music are really cool. So, if all these band names I've mentioned in this review mean something to you, try to check this demo out.
Final rate: 65 / 100

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