Demiurg is a Swedish all star death metal band helmed by Rogga Johannson of Paganizer. Giving him company on The Hate Chamber, the band’s second album, is Ed Warby (Gorefest) and Dan Swano (Edge of Sanity).

Demiurg basically play your standard old school European death metal, sounding in equal parts like Entombed, Edge of Sanity and Gorefest. Admittedly, the template the band uses is a bit old and formulaic but where Demiurg succeed is in adding enough little original touches to their sound to come across as being very interesting. The other thing that adds to The Hate Chamber is that, death metal or not, the groove is always king. Dan Swano’s inventive keyboard touches add an extra dimension to the sound and it’s used mostly in the background to provide ambience and atmosphere over the old school death metal that the band pounds out.

Another aspect of the band is that they seem completely unafraid of changing tempos and it’s when they hit those heavy mid tempo grooves like on Wolves at the Gates and The Terror Before Sleep that the band sound quite powerful. The Apocalyptic is a groovy death metal song that sounds like it could have come off Gorefest’s False album but then, the slowed down chorus with a superb bass groove and keyboards means that all comparisons are superfluous at best. Easily the best song on this album and that opening riff is a killer. This is a death metal band that’s a bit difficult to pin down and even better, a death metal band with the ability to surprise the listener.

Also, there’s a surprising depth to this album. In fact, business really picks up in the latter half the album with The Apocalyptic, World Destroyer and the brutal The Convulse Meridian showing off some real death metal skill. Dawn Dusk Delusion offers a slight let up in the intensity with its more melodic, slowed down approach at the start before going off into some very cool mid tempo chug and groove. The song also has some more impressive bass playing by Johan Berglund.

The real surprise though comes at the end of the album with Cult of Dagon. A slow, sprawling song with clean vocals and melody and incorporating classic heavy metal sensibilities to their death metal sound (including a very Queensryche moment at the start), the song sounds quite awesome and is the perfect closer.

Demiurg has made a terrific album with The Hate Chamber. It’s heavy, groovy and filled with terrific songs that will stick in your head. Anyone with even a passing interest in death metal would do well to check this one out.

Label - Mascot
Year of Release - 2008