Review Summary: Time is your poison and your prison
As a teenage Hoosier in the mid-2000s, Demiricous was my first major exposure to Indiana metal. I remember hearing a lot about them at the time between Headbanger’s Ball exposure and just general online discourse. They were also part of my first Indianapolis concert experience when a cousin and I saw them open for Slayer and Unearth in 2007. I may have been living upstate in Valparaiso without any way into the scene back then, but I still felt some connection through that sort of proximity.
This is all a little funny in hindsight considering that I didn’t really know what to make of them musically.
Much like how I expected Mastodon’s Leviathan to be a much more retro sounding prog album than the dynamic sludge it truly was, I took the marketing of One (Hellbound) way too much at face value. Much of the album’s hype revolved around how much it sounded like Slayer; the songs operated at a similar level of thrash velocity, one could hear traces of those King/Hanneman squeals in some of the solos, and the opening “Repentagram” certainly felt like it was trying to be some kind of “Angel of Death” or “War Ensemble” pastiche. The Metal Blade association certainly didn’t hurt and even the guys in Slayer themselves seemed to be in on it.
But even on a superficial examination, one can hear other influences taking on near equal footing as those aspirations. The vocals were an immediate deviation, boasting a harsh, deep delivery that’s somewhere between a death grunt and a hardcore bark rather than emulating Tom Araya’s signature shout. The songwriting also reflects those elements of hardcore and death metal as the structures feel more off-the-cuff and the aesthetic is more grounded than the more sensationalized grit of classic Slayer. To my vehemently anti-core ears at the time, this album felt more like Lamb of God or Shadows Fall trying to write a Reign in Blood rather than an “authentic” recreation of the formula.
Fortunately, I could still find plenty of songs to enjoy even at my most ambivalent. While several songs blur together to form an in-and-out barrage, there are just as many that put those crossover tendencies to catchy ends. “Perfection and the Infection” and “Matador” have some incredibly fun shout-along choruses while “Heathen Up (Out for Blood)” and “Cheat the Leader” serve up some strong riff work. This formula reaches its peak with “To Serve is to Destroy,” a mid-tempo anthem that contrasts rapid fire verses and the album’s most infectious chorus and culminates into the sort of breakdown tailor-made for live crowd-killing. Even the uncle that took my cousin and I to that show had to admit that song had some potential.
My nostalgia may not be enough to make Demiricous’s debut out to be an all-time classic, but I’ll never deny the soft spot that I have for it. This is the sort of album that I disparaged at the time for what it wasn’t rather than for what it was, and the power of hindsight has given me a bit more appreciation for it. This blend of thrashcore feels more unique than the wave of Exodus clones that would gain prominence just a couple years later and there are several catchy numbers that still hold up, reinforced by abundant energy. As somebody that has wondered what kind of gateway my own projects have served for folks getting into the scene, I’ll always respect Demiricous’s indirect role in getting me to where I am today.
