Spain’s death metal scene has been around for as long as almost any other. It is also alive and well, and those parts of it that were once dead seem to be coming back to life this very moment. Seldom has our sadly ignored Twitter hashtag #OldSchoolDeathMetalRevival2017 been more fitting than in this very moment.
Why, you ask? Because this recently released album, Origen, compiles all demos recorded by Seville’s Infestus. One from 93, one from 94 and one from 2015. The story of the band explains why we have revived our revival hashtag, despite growing ever more sick of Twitter. Infestus were founded in 1990, enjoyed some success before splitting up in 1995 after two demos and a number of live shows (the first of which was troubled by “incidents amongst the crowdâ€, to quote their official english biography). The band got back together in 2014, recorded a new demo entitled Origen, which was never released, before promptly splitting up again.
In 2016, the sole remaining original member decided to reform the band again, with all new musicians. Soon thereafter (on February 10th 2017), Xtreem Music released this album, collecting all the demos on one shiny CD. It’s easy to understand why. Even the first demo contains some great death metal, with a production typical for the time and therefore awesome. It is difficult not to compare this stuff to Avulsed, but perhaps the sound is somewhat more Scandinavian. Entombed’s Left Hand Path with more blast beats, and deeper and slightly more brutal vocals, would be one way of describing it.
The tracks from Demo ’94 are very different, especially production wise, and at Archaic Triad we love odd productions from the mid 90s. Here, our immediate thought was Eucharist’s “The View†on the Deaf Metal sampler from the same era, but the similarities are actually not that huge. This is in fact less melodic than anything from Eucharist, more brutal, and also a bit technical. Much like the first demo, this is very good, but unlike it, it has Spanish lyrics instead of the more common English. After two tracks of brutal death metal, a brief synth interlude relaxes things for a brief while, before two more tracks of almost-tech death close things out. At this point, we really have no idea what the 2015 demo is going to sound like, but we are eager to find out.
The 2015 demo continues a little in the same vein as the 1994 one, and strangely it feels very much like a natural development. Like this was Infestus’ third release after a few years of rehearsing and getting better, not a reboot after a 19 year long break. The production is very crisp, a little like some heavier modern thrash metal. The vocals are insanely brutal, and still in Spanish. When listening to “Otros Seguirán†we think of Dragon’s Scream of Death, but with far better production, other times it sounds like early melodic death metal. There is some originality here as well.
Origen offers a similar journey as the second disc of Avulsed’s anniversary album – a trip through a band’s history, with gradual changes in production and style. There are only three stages here, but more songs from each stage. We don’t know how much Infestus’ sound and style will change on the next release, now that only one of the former members remains. We hope it either stays similar, or keeps up the trend of surprising but high quality development. Thumbs up!
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