If this year* has been, to use an overused word, unprecedented, releasing an album on Jason Vorhees Day is just asking for superstition to deliver! But if you’re a doom-laden metal act, it’s a date you’d be aiming form, as we’ve seen with Dö and this New York-based trio DemonScar. The latest album from Metal / Heavy Music-meisters Nza (vocals), Meds (guitars), and Jarrad (drums) has been touted through the band’s socials for months and, to be honest, the release of “DSXX”* has snuck up quite suddenly! “What, it’s November already?!” “What, don’t you have calendar?” “Yeh, well, it is 2020! Calendars, diary planners, and the normal passage of time haven’t applied this year!”
DemonScar have been making their brand of heavy music since 1999, but only started recording and releasing their work online in 2017. That included a holiday release “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen” that featured vocalist Nza and his brother on the cover in a Santa photo from their youth. When a metal-styled band makes a Christmas cover so early in their career, you know they’re not your run o’the mill music act!
Self-described as raw, loud, personal, no fancy overdubs, no gimmicks, this is hard hitting rock as I would imagine the direction in which Derek Garland’s IGNITE or his later Draxcen collaboration with Stephen “Screamworld” Harris might have progressed, had they continued past their 2-3 releases during the 1990s; or even Sean “Stimulust” McCarthy had he been less mainstream.
2018 saw DemonScar deliver another single, EP, and compilation, while they concentrated on quality over quantity in 2019 with only the two EPs, including “Americoma”, as much an indictment on the country back then as it has become since. But 2020 was to be their year and they weren’t going to let a little old pandemic stop the build up to the release of this album. With an average of a release of a month January-July, including a collaboration with Robot Gods (David HK and Ukranium) on a “neck-snapping, gravity defying banger”, the album promises much!
So to the album and, basically, we already know eight of the ten tracks: only Serpentine (track 8); Souled Out (track 10) are new to the DemonScar canon; they went right back to “Americoma” for Broken Window on track 9. Their last album, “DemonScar Deluxe”, was also a compendium of the previous three releases. This isn’t a bad thing, though: how good is it to be able to listen to a band’s entire catalogue, or at least a collection of their most recent releases, in the one place? The other bonus is that it’s been cleaned up for the more-serious release. So have they ditched the “raw, loud, personal, no fancy overdubs” mission? I would like to think that they have, and have a great release as a result.
Stand-outs include the blistering Quarantine which is a fairly blatant tilt at what many of us have experienced during the past twelve months; and the ZZ Top-inspired Serpentine.
DemonScar also stream gigs from time to time, so what you get live is pretty much what you get on these 32 tracks on 15 releases since their holiday single three years ago this week. They rock their hearts out and, as such, are deserving of your time. DemonScar – get into them!
*DSXX = DemonScar 20: both an homage to their foundation in 1999, and to the crapful year everyone has been having