Back in 2014 Sydney-based death metal act Daemon Pyre were formed out of the ashes of As Silence Breaks and immediately started to make a name for themselves as being both brutally heavy and incredibly melodic, much more than many others within the genre. Following on from the release of their self-titled debut in 2015 they hit the road, touring extensively and playing with heavy weights such as The Haunted, Insomnium, Goatwhore, Psycroptic, King Parrot and Ne Obliviscaris and even toured Indonesia. But in 2017, when they should have been contemplating the second album, frontman Sam Rilatt stopped being involved in music whatsoever, while guitarist and main songwriter, Andrew Lilley, moved to California, it was over. However, there is the small matter of actually having written and/or recorded a full album’s worth of material, and some three years after the band ceased to be, here they are releasing that album as a final full stop.
10 songs, more than 40 minutes in length, it is numbers such as “Eternal Sky” which really capture what this band is all about, as while it is incredibly heavy and full of power and passion there is also section which features just acoustic guitar and it ends orchestrally. While they can go full bore, one of the real joys of this release is the way they use different speeds and tempos, as well as varying musical structures so this is a real diverse release. As an example, in “The Dying Spark”, drummer Simon O’Malley moves from intense to double bass drum pedals to gentle rimshots to not playing at all for a few bars. The guitars are hugely melodic for the most part yet can also riff and then move into more standard death metal mentalities. There is never the feeling that here is a band which at the time was fragmenting for various reasons, nor that much of this was recorded after the group had ceased to be. Possibly this has enabled them to relax more into it due to that, as there was never a deadline to work towards and also it was known from the outset that the band was not getting back together so there would be no touring to follow. The result is a complex melodic death metal album which is hugely interesting to any fans of the genre, and sounds as if it is being released by a band at the top of the scene as opposed to one that actually does not exist at all. Highly recommended.
Rating: 8/10
