691 seconds. Six-Hundred-Ninety-One seconds. Danish Emoviolence/Blackened Post-Hardcore outfit Demersal do not need more to prove to the world that they shouldn’t be ruled out or forgotten, when talking about the spearheads of modern Hardcore. Their newest EP Death Routines shows a band atop of their game that is able to incorporate many little details into their maelstrom
The quartet from Odense and Denmark’s capital Copenhagen demonstrate their skills once more and release yet another high-quality record after their remarkable, much more Post-Rock-affiliated full-length debut Less from 2020 and a split-EP with Regarding Ambiguity earlier this year showing a much more chaotic side. When placing these three releases into a chronological order, one can see a diversion from the Post-Rock side and more into a Emoviolence, Blackened Skramz direction. Not that the full-length did not feature these elements as well, but it had more sides.
However, when listening carefully to the five songs on Death Routines, one can easily see some of the more relaxed and more atmospheric parts as well. Demersal have not turned their back completely on this side of their musical spectrum. There is, for example, the final track ”Worry” is more than four minutes long (more than a third of the whole record) and it starts with some of these highly atmospheric elements in the shape of a very hard-hit drum-kit accompanying some moody crescendos driving the song forward to its next, more early millennium Metalcore part with a lot of brilliant riffs and some perfectly perforating drum kicks. And the same atmospheric outro element can be heard when the opener ”The Roots Have Grown Too Strong Here” slows down after the initial opening explosion which had our ears turning and open-wide within a matter of seconds. And when witnessing the sheer energy of a track like ”Waking Up Into A Fever Dream” for a second, third or fourth time, it becomes more apparent that there is also a whole layer of ambiance behind the eruptions of vocals and primary riffs. The part starting at roughly 36 seconds and then steadily meandering on in the background is exactly that. Thus, in a sense, one can say, that Death Rituals is not stepping away from the atmospheric elements but hiding them more in the background. As if the two sides of the band had been layered over each other miraculously.
Lyrically, the songs try to show the negative effects of over-exercising your daily routines up to a point when these routines become stale and block the sight on the possibilities before you. Or also the way that we try to justify things happening in our lives as something completely routine or totally normal, even though they are basically nothing else than abuse. They try to show that this world we live in, is not a normal one, but steadily rotting away, leaving us with nothing but a memory of what life once was also possible to be – exciting fun and incredibly adventurous.
Demersal are a band one should not forget but keep a close watch on. Their skills and ideas are incredibly multi-faceted and really forward-thinking and Death Routines is not only a clear-cut proof of that but also one of the EPs of 2021!
