Arson Cafe: Deviser - Evil Summons Evil Review

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Deviser - Evil Summons Evil Review

Deviser have returned. And I don’t mean they have returned since 2011, when their last full length Seasons of Darkness was released, but they have returned from the quality state they were 20 years ago. With a new album that looks forward as much as it looks backwards, Evil Summons Evil gives equal chills of awe and wide-eyed natural response as to how the very first Yoth Iria EP felt a couple of years ago.

From a band as old as its genre, and more than a decade after its last material, a wholesome and astonishing record such as this puts a smile to the face of the more demanding fan of the Greek black metal scene. Such a scene, with an undoubtedly impactful presence in the early 90’s, formed a defined sound that multiple bands have reproduced later. Evil Summons Evil takes this sound and presents a version of it magnified a thousand fold, playing basically what I imagine when I think of actually good Greek black metal, and this mark is not met by most of the newer or even older bands I come across from the country today.

Deviser teach us how to employ symphonic elements and perfectly align them with purposeful, melodic guitar lines, epic passages and variety that overshoots the average black metal album by far. Evil Summons Evil is all the more thrilling the more you listen to it, with amazing features (listen to the operatic vocals of Androniki Skull in “Of Magick”, or the guest appearances of Heljarmadr / Dark Funeral & Efthimis Karadimas / Nightfall in tracks 7 & 10 respectively) and exceptional inspiration across the whole of the record.

All tracks are easily listenable and naturally evocative, and the record stands as the evolution of this geographical subgenre, neither grossly experimental nor a slave to its own nature. Deviser simply present how things should be done in this territory, in which they are already renowned. If you think Greek black metal is all the same, you are kind of right. If you would like to listen to how it sounds at its best, here is a fitting candidate for you. Should I mention that the cover art was done by the absolute legend Kris Verwimp?

DAMAGE: 4/5 [Brilliant]

Release date: 10 Feb 2023
Release label: Hammerheart Records
Listen: Bandcamp

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Reckoning

From all the hills came screams. A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place. There was no sound. The eyes dried, the arteries drained, the lungs hushed. There was no world. We were the world’s dead people rotating and orbiting around and around, embedded in the planet’s crust, while the earth rolled down. Our minds were light-years distant, forgetful of almost everything.