Forged from the remains of the well known death metal band AS SILENCE BREAKS, new kid on the block Australian based five-piece death metal band DAEMON PYRE has released its self titled debut album. And it's one to frame in and hang on your living room wall.
The album starts with only some piano and a little quiet guitar playing in the introduction song "The Nihilist Inside". This makes the second song, "The Veil of the Martyr" sound even heavier in contrast, and from then on their intentions are clear; to play Death Metal at their loudest and heaviest, with crashing drums, solid guitar playing and piercing vocals, and to mix those ingredients together to craft an album more than worth repeatedly listening to.

DAEMON PYRE is clearly a Death Metal band, but they don't shy away from borrowing influences of different Metal genres. In the third song, "Defeated", I had to think of Nu Metal band SLIPKNOT, and of a guitar solo that John Petrucci might have played. In "Darkened Perceptions" the opening guitars remind me of METALLICA's Kirk Hammett-like riffs, and during the verse of "Misanthropic Parallels" the drums and rhythm guitars even sound a lot like Progressive Metal band TOOL. But most importantly, they display their own style, their own voice. This is becomes very clear in songs like "Iconography" and  "Beyond the Razor Wire". Even though the album is in its entirety a very solid one, the songs keep standing straight up by themselves as well.

Another worthwhile component is the atmosphere that surrounds the band and their very promising debut album. As I said, it's clearly death metal, but the album breaths more destruction, pillaging and chaos than death and doom, more like hell taking over earth than actually spiraling down to its fiery depths yourself. So don't expect to feel safe listening to this one. There's no escaping the bloody death grip of these creative, hard rocking Aussies, once they have caught you. And they will.