Helgrind - Demon Rituals

Innovators of evil, putrescence and blasphemy, Helgrind craft primitive metal from broken elements of extremely minimalist black metal and brutal death metal songs, building an environment of intensity through superficially simple rhythms which carry confrontational basic viral conflict to its logical conclusion. Take the minimalism of Phantom's Mindless Horror, fuse it with the gruesome brutality of Incantation's Onward to Golgotha, and imagine the realm of implication created through the primitive, crudely appropriate atmospheres on Demon Rituals.

Guitars drone through aesthetically simple riffs, taking the guttural style of Phantom and applying it to dark and conclusive yet indefinite chord progressions to generate the most sinister riffs possible. These are repeated in piece variations, via cleverly built song structure, with the genius of Helgrind being how to use minimal variations between major phrasal riffs to hold down sizeable structural atmospheric territory in each song.

It's easy to see why Demon Rituals is hailed as the spiritual heir of Divine Necromancy, as it possesses all the elements that made Phantom's cacophonous debut an underground classic and a black metal masterpiece. Much of the ideas present here show the way forward for black metal, and underground music in general. Helgrind are truly visionaries and masters of their craft.

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