Season of Mist

The Australian and Anti-christ Deströyer 666 now based in the Netherlands released its last album back in 2002. The unfortunate expiration of visas of two of the band members put the band in difficult times, and required some new recruitments. The Terror Abraxas EP was released in 2003 and that was the last many of us had heard from these wolves of war. Six years of waiting have seemed like six decades. A year and a half ago the legions of unholy devotees heard the good news of the D666 guys working on new material and the recording of a new album. Finally, the sounds of sin have been given back to us.

It has been a long time. A new Deströyer 666 album has been one of my most anticipated delights in the last six years, and I was beginning to think it would not happen. But with the recent bequeathment of the new Absu album, another treasure I had been anticipating for something approaching a decade, I thought all was not lost. I was correct, because only days ago Defiance was released in the states and I picked it up within a few hours of the record store opening. The entire album had been leaked over the internet over a month ago, and I couldn't help but listen through it all once. But I did my best to refrain from listening any more than that, to not ruin the impact of the brilliance I was hearing.

Now that the wait is finally finished, I must say with all honesty and truth that Defiance is outstanding. From the first seconds of the first track to the final moments of the final song we are punished with Deströyer 666's trademark sound of rampaging, nihilistic, epic thrashing madness under unholy blackness and death. Not much has changed in these six years. This is good news for anyone and everyone who has loved the sound these true sons of Satan have chiseled from day one. One will instantly recognize that this is the very same band (despite a few different members) that brought us Unchain the Wolves, Phoenix Rising, and Cold Steel... for an Iron Age. To me, the emphasis of Defiance seems to be on the finest aspects of Phoenix Rising and Terror Abraxas, but still with something representing their entire discography, while managing to not sound stale or old.

The familiar epic and melodic tremolo guitars that haunt and carry so many Deströyer 666 classics beyond the forgetable stagnance of hundreds of thrash bands past and (especially) present is intact, making its entrance captivatingly in each song, while KK's beastial roars sound honed and more defiant and hateful than ever. KK's vocals have always had such a unique characteristic, with the barbaric destructive strength unquestioningly delivered with utmost hostility and raging dominance, but also an easily identifiable tone that no other vocalist has come close to matching. Each track, without exception, harbors powers and cruel, tremendous warhammers of punishment in finely crafted riff-thunder to stand alone as memorable songs not only for the unforgiving and relentless terror that they create, but for the songwriting and melodic components that exemplify everything that is metal. In layman's terms, this means that the riffs are ultra-violent (Weapons of Conquest, I Am Not Deceived, The Barricades Are Breaking, The Path to Conflict, A Thousand Plagues), strategically epic (Blood For Blood, A Stand Defiant, Human All Too Human, A Sermon To The Dead), and laced with leads upon leads that refuse to be anything less than phenomenal.

A track by track review would be futile for me to do, really. This is simply because the time it would take me to write an appropriate description and analysis for each track could much better be spent just listening to and enjoying the album. The sound of Defiance marks the clearest and cleanest sound Destroyer 666 has thus far had on any recording. While the production is admittedly modern, the music and energy and ravaging, spiteful element of madness is anything but.  I don't feel as if anything has been lost in this clean production, as it has been utilized intelligently to give a thicker and more overpowering feel to Destroyer's already epic and monstrous sound.

Every song on Defiance combines the primitive violence and fast, aggressive and ruthless instincts of thrash, death metal and black metal with the almost hypnotic, epic heaviness and eerie, foreboding dirge of what could only be described as the soundtrack to the most monumentally huge and terrifying moments of destruction and death in the history of humanity's existence. In this sense, it is not much unlike other releases by Destroyer 666. Stylistically it is all the same. But no moment on any song on here sounds like a rehashed idea or a stale repetition of something we've heard before. Everything is refreshingly new, unforgetably true to the vision of Destroyer 666, and consistently malevolent, epic (I know I've used that word 70 times by now) and cutting deeper the path that Destroyer 666 has tread in the world of metal.

Track list:
1. Weapons of Conquest
2. I Am Not Deceived
3. Blood For Blood
4. The Barricades Are Breaking
5. A Stand Defiant
6. The Path to Conflict
7. A Thousand Plagues
8. Human All Too Human
9. A Sermon To The Dead
 
9.5/10