Formed in 2011 in Berlin, Germany with the fierce determination to follow the path of original ‘Death Metal’ – the band ‘Dehuman Reign’ creates fast and raging old school metalwork without any modern influences or trends. They strive to attain pure, authentic and maleficent perfection.
Their latest line-up was founded in March 2012, and it includes Alex on lead vocals, Ulf Binder on guitars, Tesk (who was previously with Damned Division/Yspotopsy) on guitars, Rouven on bass (ex Akrival) and Totte on drums ( ex-Harmony Dies.) In the summer of 2012 they started to think about and to record their début Mini Album “Destructive Intent”. Their first live performances were accomplished in December 2012.
The album opens with ‘Prelude to Perdition’ : Soaked in sad tears, the guitars cry until they are irritated by the bat-wing percussion that is so fast that it fans the flames of fury. Then a suppurating voice dribbles out like a diseased liquid oozing grotesquely. This brings us, with some inevitability – to the ‘Extinction Machine’. The guitars on this track flail like black-snake scimitars, and the deeply bruising vocal from Alex will soon start to reverberate around your inner ear. The guitars play imaginatively around the pungent, ringing percussion. At one point, they sound almost like a kind of fanfare from hell. Evoking the damned.
‘Invocation I Black Seed’ is a petition of burning, yearning fear. A prayer that disrupts and weakens. It will twist you with it’s horror, and it will awaken the dread within you. The verses soon become rooted within the deepest recesses of your evil mind. Then ‘Irreversible Soul Consumption’ roars to life in a tempestuous fury of quick-fire beats and brimstone-hot guitar-work. The lyrics hit home with Faustmesser neatness- like a push-dagger delivered right into the heart. A burst of starlight from the guitars partially illuminates the desolate scene – and then a raging fire consumes all of the landscape – to create a battlefield upon which the corpse-ridden cruel voice can rule. It can out-slide, out slither, and out-run all but the worthiest. This song is a battle of wills – with the divine “light-bearer” gaining glory at the end.
‘Staring Beyond the Edge of Time’ comes at you like a chaffed and blackened corpse rising from the deep. The vocals are unnatural and putrefying – the rhythms are super ventilated and may cause such intense symptoms in the listener that organ failure is to be expected – unless you are very strong. Then, after the second Invocation, we reach the deeply venous track ‘Veil of Ignorance’. This song will permeate your exoskeleton – to eat upon your dark soul. The acute cautery work – caused by those highly corrosive guitars – adds fierce heat to the overall effect. The tumult of sound and voice is a volatile mix of steaming hot fluids running into overflowing vortices. This is a highly accomplished piece.
The album ends with ‘Masks of Sorrow’ which is a fanfare of thunder-wing brutality and sterilized titanium. The mercy stroke is delivered by the most immoderate – and unnecessarily infectious – riff that you may have heard for a long time.
This album delivers more punch than the students of Jimmy Fung and more malevolent darkness than the writings of “Alibeck the Egyptian”.
Get it, listen to it. And endure.
