RSS Feed


DEMON LUNG
A Dracula

Candlelight (2015)
Rating: 8/10

Las Vegas is probably the last place I expected metallers Demon Lung to emerge from, but if you’re looking for the glitz and glamour associated with the location then look elsewhere because these Nevada doomsters – active since 2011 – are wielding their sophomore effort as if it were a magic wand ready to cast deadly spells.

A Dracula squirms out from Satan’s orifice two years after the band’s 2013 debut The Hundredth Name, and as expected it’s another bracing slow-motion blizzard of gargantuan riffs and oaken percussion sure to creak the floorboards and send the lightbulbs a flickering.

The coven behind such a mammoth exercise of the morose is vocal ghoul Shanda Fredrick, guitarists Phil Burns and Brent Lynch, bassist Jason Lamb and drummer Jeremy Brenton. Indeed, Demon Lung is very much another of those occult-influenced, female-fronted bands high on witchery and devilish dabbling. But while the market may at the moment seem flooded with such similar-sounding clans, Demon Lung still has enough spooky darkness and dust within its alcoves to rise like some evil spectre escaping the confines of its ouija board.

This is dense, gloomy and above all spine-shuddering doom metal where the riffs are kept relatively simply and yet rise up from the pits, through the bones and will leave your cranium as a pile of dust. The percussion is massive; tolling like some ancient and rusty churchyard bell to signify the crawling chaos of the bass and aching siren which oozes from the gawping hole of Shandra Fredrick. This is real, authentic doom, the sort of Sunday afternoon drizzle soundtrack of lumbering chords, back-breaking achiness and mournful yelps which are sure to have you donning the funeral garb and blacking out the windows.

You know what to expect, especially if you heard the band’s debut offering – the combo mastering the art of foreboding structures which roll out from the foggy marsh like some half-hinted Lovecraftian horror. Okay, so the detractors may argue that it’s just another heaving slab of retro doom, the sort of Black Sabbath-flecked, 70s-indulged, satanically-fused lump we’ve heard countless times before and in a sense you’d be right, but for me if the songwriting is good enough then I don’t see why the coffin full of maggots can’t shift over and make room for another moss-covered devil of despair.

However, Demon Lung is certainly less nifty and subtle than so many acts. With the likes of Purson, Occultation, Jex Thoth etc. there’s been that added ingredient of late-60s and early-70s psych where the vocals drift in spectral fashion, whereas with The Oath we were drowned in an almost biker-ish coating of oil. Demon Lung offers something more weighty and evil, and so we find ourselves hanging from a thicker edge as the combo suffocates us with six lengthy chunks and two shorter ventures.

The brief introduction ‘Rursumque Alucarda’ is a slightly haunting acoustic breeze which then gives way to the ominous ‘Behold The Daughter’. The latter is probably one of the heaviest tracks I’ve heard this year, although it’s not the quicksand ooze I expected; instead, we get a juggernaut judder coated in Fredrick’s almost hoarse yet downbeat call. The riffs roll like black clouds about to spew torrential rain, and when the clock strikes 12 I can just hear this lump of gloom being the soundtrack to another blood-soaked ritual.

The whole combo creates some mightily orgasmic trudge which never labours, hinting at ethereal aplomb and thick, suffocating mantras. ‘I Am Haunted’ is equally punishing, although Shandra Fredrick’s tone is slightly more potent and powerful, rising ghost-like from the billowing black smoke of the dense percussion and crushing guitar slop. But it’s not just ancient pummelling doom we’re served up, every now and then the outfit likes to throw in a spectral episode with strange creeping melodies which eventually shrink back into the fog as another rolling riff comes in from the sea.

‘Gypsy Curse’ keeps things simple and monolithic. It’s very much bare bones doom metal reliant on that devastating drum avalanche and as the riff speeds up I can just imagine Ozzy Osbourne wailing “Is the end my friend, Satan’s coming round the bend”, such is the familiarity of the structure, but it’s still classic doom played for keeps.

And this is very much what to expect throughout; Demon Lung leading stray into the murky mulch of the aching ‘Deny The Savior’ and the lumbering ‘Mark Of Jubilee’, before the mellow interlude of ‘Rursumque Adracula’ where a solitary solo worms its way into the sky like a soaring crow.

Then it’s time for once last graveyard shift with the seven-minute ‘Raped By The Serpent’, which chugs with such an engulfing intensity that I wonder how any solo can manage to escape the silt. Again, after the thunder has rolled into the bay, Demon Lung injects into the haze a few more pensive moments of dread until one final tirade of doom. And that’s exactly what this album is; a tirade of doom – pure, simple and often drenched in ghostly splendour more suited to the ragged coastline of Whitby in North Yorkshire where Bram Stoker set his masterpiece Dracula.

Demon Lung’s second chapter is one of those sullen chunks of sludginess even the Count would want to get his fangs into.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share