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The Gauntlet: Demon Hunter |
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Demon Hunter Album Review
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Tracklist
1. Storm The Gates Of Hell
2. Lead Us Home
3. Sixteen
4. Fading Away
5. Carry Me Down
6. A Thread Of Light
7. I Am You
8. Incision
9. Thorns
10. Follow The Wolves
11. Fiction Kingdom
12. The Wrath Of God
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Looking at Demon Hunter’s biography, with its boasting of mainstream acclaim (AOL Music, MTV) it wouldn’t take much to guess what kind of release this was going to be. Putting the topic of this being a Christian band (and proud of it, as the promo pictures suggest) aside, this is a pretty ordinary run-of-the-mill metal affair.
It’s beautifully produced, has riffs in abundance and has all the melodic hooks to ensure that the more mainstream-inclined is satisfied. Sadly, that latter remark is where the main problem with this record lies. To put it bluntly, Demon Hunter are a lot more interesting when they are at their heaviest. The melodic choruses are often bland and repetitive, slowing down the intensity of some otherwise fairly brutal metallic onslaughts. The instrumentation on a whole, it must be said, is solid as hell. It may have been done a trillion times before but Demon Hunter mix circle-pit inducing Hardcore and hair-swinging Metal rather well, taking obvious influences by bands such as Pantera and Hatebreed.
It must be noted that this band is extremely Christian influenced. There will always be a certain amount of trepidation towards a Christian release if you are a non-believer, as no one that way inclined would particularly want to be screamed at for 40-odd minutes about how we should have God in our lives. The album sleeve details what each song is about, and every song is, predictably, written about being a Christian.
This instantly (lyrically, anyway) alienates a large selection of their listeners, but if you can look past this, this is a pretty solid release that doesn’t exactly re-define heavy music but instead sits in there quite nicely.
Review by: Nick Calafato
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