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DEMON BITCH
Master Of The Games

Gates Of Hell (2024)
Rating: 8/10

Entering the world of Detroit, Michigan-based Demon Bitch is something akin to attempting to sidestep a monstrous spider web littered with entangled victims. What looks like chaos before you are in fact wonderfully constructed Gothic labyrinths, only instead of each strand consisting of a silken stickiness, here we have a network of neoclassical meandering.

With Master Of The Games, Demon Bitch delves further in the crust of heavy metal nostalgia by way of fusing together a Thin Lizzy aesthetic with an occult fringe of King Diamond meets Apocrypha that is peppered with banshee wails and Fates Warning-esque tendrils.

These guys know how to play, so this is more than just standard metal fodder. Duelling axe work, off kilter vocals and high levels of wizardry-cum-zaniness result in quite the experience as the likes of ‘Not Of The Cruciform’ and ‘Tower Of Dreams’ showcase bewildering talent littered with flashes of orchestral nuances and those peculiar yells of Logon Saton.

As the album unravels one can only marvel at the strange majesty Demon Bitch constructs and it sounds so oddly natural. It’s been eight years since the bands 2016 Hellfriends debut full-length, but they’ve made up for lost time here where dollops of melody enrich those glinting metallic structures as nods towards Yngwie Malmsteen successfully marry to Fates Warning.

A sense of the epic is always on the horizon as ‘Into The Archway’ and the title track unravel like vast journeys, great tapestries of explosive power metal circa the mesmerising yet underrated Titan Force. ‘The Quickening’ brings a thrashing pace, ‘Sentinel At The Spire’ bristles with melodrama and every space is filled with an elegant terrifying shred.

Just like the aforementioned bands, Demon Bitch – whose name doesn’t actually do them any justice – are firmly embedded in that mystical 80s sound, but the musicianship ensures that any stodge is absent, and so, like a magical sword rising from a dismal swamp, Master Of The Games is an absolute beacon of a record within the thick mists of retro metal.

Neil Arnold

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