Review Summary: Not their finest hour, but a step in the right direction.
Demon Hunter's self-titled 2002 debut is one of the more overlooked albums in the group's discography, and there's a strong case for suggesting it's one of the weakest. Although it did a decent job of introducing the group's core sound, there's not a lot on this album that wouldn’t be done much better on follow-up album
Summer of Darkness two years later.
Summer of Darkness in turn led to slightly more experimental efforts over the following few years, which made Demon Hunter stand out in the crowded ‘Christian metal’ scene they had helped popularise. It’s hard to say what exactly made those later albums so potent, but whatever it was, there is precious little of it to be found on this album. It seems like the band were more interested in laying down a signature sound than doing anything particularly fancy with it; while I wouldn’t expect much else from a debut, having heard the rest of what this band has to offer,
Demon Hunter can’t quite resonate with me as much.
There are several things to notice about this album. For one thing, it is short. At just nine songs (excluding a 30-second interlude), there’s a lot less content here than on any of the band’s other releases, which says something about how wide-ranging their musical ideas were at this point. For another, it’s considerably darker than most of their other material. Future Demon Hunter records would be characterised by strong, memorable hooks on almost every track, but here they function as little more than brief flashes of colour to break up the extreme anger. In the somewhat rare moments when Ryan Clark isn’t yelling his lungs out, he’s intoning three- or four-note melodies in a clean voice that feels far more urgent than relaxed. I’m sure it goes without saying, but if it’s happy music you’re after, this isn’t the place to look.
Perhaps the most noticeable thing about this album, though, is how aurally one-dimensional it feels compared to the likes of
The Triptych and
Storm the Gates of Hell. Most of these songs follow the same basic pattern: programmed intro, heavy riff, screamed verse, sung chorus, repeat last three, quiet breakdown, loud buildup, end. While the songs in themselves may be good (not great) overall, the lack of diversity just doesn’t do enough to make them stand out. The band does make some deviations from said formula towards the end of the record, to good effect: “As We Wept” is built on an interesting odd time signature riff, while “A Broken Upper Hand” could almost qualify as nu metal with Clark’s rapping in the verses. The two ballads, “My Throat is an Open Grave” and “The Gauntlet”, work well for what they are and provide a nice change from all the aggression, even if they don’t stay with the listener the same way that “Deteriorate” or “Carry Me Down” do.
Demon Hunter is short. It largely lacks the hooks that would make the band such a hot property in future. It has its share of lyrical misfires (
"I've gotta choke it down, break it down until it's broke down"), and half the songs are almost indistinguishable from each other. But for all its shortcomings, I can forgive this record. Because without it, we wouldn't have
Summer of Darkness. And without
Summer of Darkness, we wouldn't have
The Triptych. See where I'm going with this?
Demon Hunter may be far from a perfect album, but it laid the foundations for powerful things that had still to come. And for that, if nothing else, I can give it credit.
