Sanctifier craft fine quality vintage-sounding Brazilian death metal, straight forward and without the desire to pander to the elitist shit contingent wanting the next trend. These death metal maniacs have been kicking around since they were teenagers in the 80s and are not children of the tape-trading phenomenon but instigators of it.
For that reason, while Daemoncraft displays its Brazilian sound right off the bat with a warped rhythm weaving through opening track “Demon Ov Lava” (which is also added as a bonus track with Portuguese vocals at the end of this CD) they’re also influenced by their peers of the time such as Immolation and latter-era Morbid Angel (i.e. during Rutan’s relocation from Redbank to Tampa). To my ears at least, this mid-period death metal influence shows up musically on this recording and appears more prevalent than other pioneering influences the band naturally does have.
Getting robbed at gunpoint and thus losing his equipment didn’t hold sole song writer Alexandre Emerson back from creating some wicked songs yet again in the name of worshiping the ancient ones, even before it was a fashion with the young whipper snappers after this sort of music became available at the mall. The cult of Cthulhu remains central to the driving force behind the writing of this music. Lyrical content avoids any crypto-punk subject matter which was par for the course when this band were teenagers and is consistently so now that they’re seasoned elders of the genre.
Daemoncraft emerges as a compact album with some amazing guitar work that has just the right amount of more modern (i.e. early 90s style) feel meshed with the primitive proto-death metal of the 80s from which this band is forged. “The Enchanter” is a good example of this layering of feeling between the two realms. However, the song is consistently deliberate throughout and makes for an excellently paced album.
I agree with executive producer Everton De Castro of Dying Music when he says Daemoncraft is a work for metal brothers of the death metal old school; for those who aren’t just here for a trend, is there any other kind?
Sanctifier – Daemoncraft: $12 (BR) / $10 (US)
Tags: death metal, sanctifier
It’s solid death metal, you are certainly right about the Immolation influence, it’s prevalent but not enough to call the band a clone. Even still… I feel as though purchasing this band’s album would be a sympathy purchase, which I am against. Maybe it’s because I’m young (okay, not that young), but I think I have found all the death metal I could ever want to listen to, and it’s all from the early ’90s.
Immolation hasn’t been good for a long time now. When was Harnessing Ruin? It’s been downfall ever since.
It seems like these bands keep springing up: Morbid Angel Covenant “war” riffs mixed with Immolation’s “groove” riffs. Nothing special. Still waiting on something that’s first Gorgoroth album quality. It’s not even about the style of music, it’s just kind of shake and bake death metal like Angelcorpse and Impiety. What happened? Everything is Hate Eternal or Unique Leader band # 27892 (Suffocation ripoff). In black metal, it’s Dark Funeral/Watain/Dissection melodeath with “spooky” chords and blasts or Hellhammer for D.R.I. kids. Nothing really special, really worth owning like Blessed are the Sick or The Red in the Sky is Ours will come out again, everyone became self-aware of metal’s stupid image and poor allusions to classical music (Spawn of Possession) that they would rather just quit after 1993 and listen to classical. I guess a better future would be Reign in Blood style structures in Entombed esque music, but Dismember fucked that one up too. Even Century Media reissued Morgoth, Gorement, Sacramentum, etc. in an effort to have something to make money on. The new shit is just too crappy to sell as many units. There’s a lot of awesome stuff between 86-93 that you just don’t need so many bands. Live shows are good, sure, but just become cover bands. I’d rather hear the real shit.
I think everyone’s trying to spawn the next generation of quality death metal. The problem is that they’re starting with the music, not the ideas behind the music. As a result, the imitation factor is high.
I enjoyed this band, but after hearing the last two execrable piles of shit that Immolation came out with, I’ve started to see that whole vein of chanty NYDM to be a dead end. There’s a reason Immolation never made it big. Their version of death metal suddenly seems to have always been heading toward this point, where the vocals are more important than the guitars…
I downloaded the whole thing and have run through it. Overall review: not bad; it’s on par with Morgengrau. This means that it didn’t do anything wrong, but isn’t really all that solidly excellent either. One riff is great, the next seems tossed off in a smoke break. The riffs don’t fit together. Too much emphasis on vocals. Too much repetition. Not enough point to these songs. Songs aren’t about the words, but the riffs. These riffs just fit together, not contrast each other. A lot of bombast. That’s good, I guess. Not going to make the top 100.
I bet Brett would argue that bands (that are not from the pantheon of Greats) from 1988-1994 “are no longer relevant” since 1988-1994 is no longer here. This band or Morgengrau, had those records been released during 1988-1994 would belong to the lower eschelon of bands Brett would deem irrelevant and unworthy of any kind of attention. There are literally dozens of death metal and black metal bands of that period that are better than these. Brett always argues that “lost gems do not exist and if they are forgotten is because they were never that good in the first place”. All “newer” bands posted on Deathmetal.org will be forgotten in two weeks and none will be superior to those “forgotten and obscure bands” of 1988-1994.
I don’t know, there’s a lot of mediocrity in the review archive as well that’s over praised (or even mentioned). I’m talking about Birth A.D., Disma, Fleshcrawl, Cenotaph, Averse Sefira, Troll, Blaspherian… Some stuff seems stupid though like no Grave, but give another later-coming more moron level band like Gutted a place. At least put the first Dominus album in their place. Katatonia, but no Cemetary or Paradise Lost, the bands they imitate? Why is Ulver even mentioned? Overall, I’d say more late coming stuff like Manes or Deeds of Flesh deserve a place, for example, even crap like Gorguts’ Obscura, but the meaningless regurgitation bands like Pyrexia? Seems this whole site needs some kind of overhaul…
Maybe man, I dunno. My point is, you cant: a) truly love Metal + b) agree/enjoy Anus.com, without truly living in the Past and wanting to stay there! There are a lot of useful reviews on Heindenlärm that I’d consider it along with the DLA, a truly worthy source to find valuable Metal music. ——— I like Pyrexia and Gutted a little bit to be honest, but whether or not we agree that those are good bands, we can always agree that the DLA and Heidenlärm were credible sources to read about mostly quality Metal music; something that Deathmetal.org seems to nowdays lack! Worse comes to Worse, I’d prefer to read about a mediocre band of 1993 than one from 2013.