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Continuing the theme from my I Shalt Suffer review, I figured I'd point you all in the direction of another underground gem lost in the mists of time. Similarly to the I Shalt Suffer album, Demigod's 'Slumber of Sullen Eyes' has recently been re-issued after being out of print for a long time, and therefore changing hands on eBay for crazy amounts of money. Demigod formed around the time of the explosion of Scandinavian death metal, and hurriedly got buried, unnoticed amongst the mire of sound-a-likes and copy cats, failing to get their much deserved 15 minutes in the spotlight.

'Slumber of Sullen Eyes' set itself apart from the Xerox bands of the time, by introducing a true sense of unholy melancholic anger into their riffs, rather than just blasting the fuck out of them like the majority of their neighbors, who thought that extremity for extremity's sake was the way forward. The sublime slow sections are where this band really stood out, with double bass drums following the chunky guitar-work perfectly, layering riff upon riff of drooling molten lead into a mountainous black lunar soundscape, equally brooding and noxious as it is intoxicating. The guitar-work is cleverly put together, with an excellent sense of diabolical melody and effortless use of dynamics. The blasting sections set themselves apart too, with dual tracked harmony ridden guitar-work, writhing and twisting like a maggot ridden corpse, utilizing the complete opposites of controlled elegance and destructive disorder to maximum potential. This re-issue tacks on the band's 1991 demo 'Unholy Domain' as bonus tracks, which while enjoyable enough as a frivolous extra, doesn't quite live up to the quality of the material in the album itself. Demigod reformed in the early nineties, but never managed to capture the pure evil that encapsulates this album on their 2nd release.

Maybe not as influential as the unholy 'Left Hand Path/Like An Ever-flowing Stream/Where No Life Dwells' trinity, 'Slumber of Sullen Eyes' is just as enjoyable in my opinion (and twice as evil).