Demonic Force – Demo

No, I didn't draw that. That was drawn by the band members. Or maybe it was one of their friends. I don't know. Concerning the band itself, I had to do a lot of digging in order to find any information about these guys. Apparently, Demonic Force was a band from New Jersey that eventually changed its name to Mercenari. Mercenari would then eventually change their name to Midian. This was the only demo they put out as Demonic Force, and it's super rare. The only people who have physical copies of this demo are the band members and a few of their friends from high school. The only reason I have this is because one of the band members was generous enough to upload it to the internet. Being a sucker for rare and obscure metal, I snatched it up right away.

I'll just get the biggest problem out of the way: the production is too loud. The first time I played this, I jumped and immediately turned down my speakers. I don't like it when bands feel the need to turn up the music really loud. All this does is create massive clipping problems. If someone wants their music loud, all they have to do is turn up the knob on their speakers. You don't need to do that job for them.

Aside from that, the music is pretty good. The drums keep the pace quite well and I enjoy how prominent the cymbal crashes are. They're also able to kick up the speed with relative ease, and when they play blast beats, the prominent cymbal crashes give them extra impact. The bass mainly follows the guitar, but they're rather high in the mix and give the music an extra level of depth.

The vocals utilize both a clean vocal style similar to Joey Belladonna and a raspy grow similar to Kreator. He performs both styles quite well, but there are times during his clean vocal performance where his vocal chords start to wear out. I think he should have practiced more, but it's still an admirable performance. The best performance is given by the guitars. The riffs have a rather infectious quality to them, and although they're not all that original, the structures are quite pleasing to the ears. I especially love the solos. He tears at those strings like a madman. My favorite solos are those on “Dark Future”. They're both beautiful and furious.

If you can get passed the flawed production, you'll be in for some great obscure thrash. You'll especially love the guitars. They're just plain excellent.