This album by Spanish death metal combo Devil In You certainly will be added to that list, perhaps even for a long time. Their second album is out now and it's an elementary but highly effective piece of extreme music. Members have been around in bands in the Sevillian underground for years before they founded this quintet. That experience is quite audible on 'Demons', blending old school brutal death metal with a flair for melody and a dark, grim atmosphere.
The music as such isn't very complicated but incorporates all the necessary ingredients to make it great; grinding riffs, stomach twisting grunts and a wide array of drums, ranging from doom, over metal and industrial to sheer speed. That being said, the songs usually aren't even that fast but tend to nudge towards the groovy death metal of bands like Entombed or, as is the case with the amazing 'Dead Lines' towards a band like Fear Factory.
My favorite tracks are opener 'Semyazza´s Liberation' and title track 'Demons'. It's good that these are the first songs on the album because they immediately grab that listener's attention, making him realize this is something interesting. Yet, then the band needs to maintain a certain level of enjoyability, otherwise the album collapses like a house of cards. Luckily, Devil In You has some bad-ass songs ready, including the moshpit inducing 'Orobas' and the intense 'Merciful'.
I haven't written anything about the fact that this is a female fronted death metal band. Why? Because I don't think it matters. Yes, it was awesome when Angela Gossow opened the growling gates of death metal for women but I don't care about the gender of a vocalist (or any musician). All I care about is: are they good. And yes, Bárbara has a massive grunt, loaded with sheer brutality and brute power. She certainly adds a lot to the already quite crushing music.
So what we have here is a great piece of death metal, influenced by the old school of the genre and combined with a touch of doom and a decent feel for atmosphere. I dig the guitar solos, who give the whole a vintage heavy metal edge as well. Fans of extreme metal won't be disappointed by this gem, and that's almost a promise. Let's get this show on the road and have Devil In You blast over Europe with this material.
Serge