Review: Behemoth “Demigod” CD

Despite the fact that this Polish act has been around for a hell of a long time and has quite an extensive and varied discography, I've never paid that much attention to 'em. I've heard bits and pieces here and there, and I've got "Thelema.6" and all that, but for whatever reason I've just never followed the band. This is a great death metal record, though. I'd definitely guess it's the band's finest to date (unless you prefer their rugged beginnings). There's a lot of speed and precision to the riffing, drawing on influences similar to Morbid Angel and Nile, with a few of the more powerful dual guitar rhythms reminding me of their labelmates Vital Remains' latest epic. I wouldn't refer to it as technical death metal, but there are definitely some complex flurries of notes going on here and there, and the lead work is fuckin' killer! The majority of the stuff does sound most connected to classic Florida death metal given a more contemporary sound via the clinical dissonance and speed of Norwegian black metal's more progressive side, which is a fine blend by me. "Sculpting the Throne ov Seth" opens the disc (almost misleadingly) with slick acoustic guitars (which return at the close of the killer "The Nephilim Rising") but then quickly plows into raging and unrelenting speeds within a minute's time, which is rather demonstrative of the bulk of this work. Admittedly the fact that so much of the songwriting circles around blazing speeds can be mildly tiresome, but the quality of the performances and the overall atmosphere carry it through, and the fact that the songs average around three minutes each is a fucking great demonstration of focus. However, "Conquer All" has a midpaced stroll going on with lots of thrashy gallops to the picking patterns that jump out right away, making for one of my favorite tracks herein due to its pacing as well as the crushing dual guitar interaction and subtle discordance seeping into some of the chord phrasings. "The Reign of Shemsu-Hor" tops eight minutes to end things off, complete with a brooding intro that uses faint synths in the background and a much chunkier rhythmic backbone - standing out as far more powerful than the other tracks overall... a perfect end, for sure. I'm into the recording quality as well. The percussion is of course pretty rigid and lacks the natural warmth that I'd prefer, but the mix is nice and clear and lets guitars run the show, keeping the drumming under control and balancing the levels efficiently. There's not a lot of bass guitar in there, but the guitar tone is nice and chunky while still retaining a little bit of a midrange bite for detail. The vocals sound damn effective, and despite all of the layering they never overpower the music, which is cool. I wouldn't really change much about the sound at all. The layout also looks pretty nice. There are a lot of band photos that are somewhat goofy, but the quality is professional and the art is all consistent as well. It looks good, screw it. The text arrangements are crisp and compact, and even though I'm not that into the lyrical approach, mindblowingly enough there are actually song descriptions included, which is an extremely rare case for any metal band. Much of the material is based on or in part inspired by literature (Crowley and such) and tends to deal with intense individuality, refusing to compromise, etc. There are some cool lines, I just find the actual explanations to be more intriguing than the lyrics themselves. The video for "Conquer All" is tacked onto the CD-Rom and consists largely of artistically shot performance footage on a set. There are some cool outside shots spliced in of some other footage that's more narrative in tone, and even though the video's somewhat uneventful (I've never been a big fan of music videos, honestly) the quality's pretty slick nonetheless. This is a strong offering. Some of the more dynamic tracks that offer the most tempo changes are fuckin' killer, and it's always rather curious when a band that's already got such an extensive history in place is able to continually progress and release increasingly high quality material. Good work.