Six years ago
I came across an obscure heavy metal band on a Terrorizer magazine compilation.
It was Terrorizer magazine #229 from November 2012.
Dani Filth was on the cover promoting Cradle of Filth’s then-new album The Manticore And Other Horrors. Ghaal
was back in black and on the scene again with God Seed. A collaboration called Mrityu
between Ihsahn and Matt Heafy
from Trivium, of all people, was announced (incidentally, it appears that nothing has come
from it to date). And an obscure group calling themselves The Devil
had a track featured on the accompanying Fear Candy #113 sampler CD.
Despite the
criticism that is traditionally heaped onto free samplers, I was a fan of the Fear Candy series. While I acknowledge
that the inevitable rule of thumb with the free CD is to discard nine tenths of what you get, those Fear Candy compilations nonetheless got me into some fantastic
music. December 2012’s Fear Candy 114, for example, was directly responsible for introducing me
to Tengger Cavalry.
The track
that got me into The Devil was an intriguing one. Titled Universe, it stood apart from the rest of the compilation due its
lack of vocals. And yet, it wasn’t a traditional instrumental track though.
Instead, it was made up a multitude of samples detailing UFO sightings and
alien conspiracies, overlaid to some reasonably well-produced gothic metal.
The samples
were put together in such a way as to construct what a friend termed “a
narrative” (an accurate way of putting it, but alas, I’m not a fan of the term)
— a story constructed from samples in lieu of vocals.
I was very
interested. I was able to find out that The Devil had a self-titled album on
Candlelight Records — no small achievement for any heavy metal outfit — but not
very little else was known about them. For one thing, all band members summoned
the spirit of Ghost by remaining masked and anonymous.
Here’s what
I said about The Devil back
in 2013:
“This artist is another Terrorizer magazine
discovery, and a group about which public knowledge seems to be strangely
lacking. What I know comes from a small and somewhat silly magazine interview
in which they kind of explained why they remain anonymous and wear masks.
Nonetheless, they’re one of those bands that are so mysterious and elusive that
their music hasn’t even leaked (yet) into the usual channels.
What is legitimately available for public viewing, however,
is a collection of two videos that showcase not only their style but also their
awesome multi-media skills.
The first of these videos, Universe, deals with alien conspiracies. The other, Extinction Level Event, is cut up
speeches about nuclear war post-WWII. Both make superb use of actual footage
and tell a story (because I refuse to use the term “narrative”) put together
from various samples. A written description couldn’t do justice to these
tracks.
I love them both, so please, watch these videos.”
The Devil: not like other heavy metal bands
I really did dig those tracks. While the audio alone was
something I really enjoyed, the multimedia delivery in the form of those videos
was something else.
Ever since the heavy metal music video became a medium (fun
fact: the first heavy metal music video aired on MTV was by Iron Maiden) it has
usually been an accompaniment to a track. Not so with The Devil — here the
video was an art form unto itself. It didn’t just accompany the music — the
video was the story driving it.
Unsurprisingly, what little information I did find about The
Devil included liberal use of the term ‘cinematic’. Nonetheless, this was every
bit an obscure outfit. I played those two videos to a few people, to mixed
results, and I acknowledged that The Devil would be a group that no one would
ever hear of.
I certainly never expected to meet anyone who had heard of
them, much less so much as even entertain the thought that I would see them
live — and in Australia of all places.
Yet somehow that is precisely what happened.
And here they were.
Pic: Vereance Lucitria
The Devil support the Therion Australian tour
There should be a word for the phenomenon that is a double
take resulting from the good-natured disbelief of discovering concrete evidence
that a band you love and never expected to see live is visiting your country.
Whatever that term is, it describes how I felt when I saw
the promotional flyer announcing the Therion Australian tour.
There it was: Therion. Supported by The Devil.
The only reason that The Devil didn't receive profile shots was because they wear masks.
Oddly enough, the word “devil” is exceedingly popular when it
comes to heavy metal band names. At last count, Metal Archives listed 126 results
for just [devil]
and 22 containing [the
devil]. For this reason I was understandably incredulous that it was
one and the same The Devil from years back.
“What? Not the The Devil?” was a fairly accurate paraphrasing
of my thoughts at the time. “As in, that unbelievably obscure sample-based
instrumental heavy metal outfit that released those amazing videos five or so years
ago? Surely not?”
Sure, that’s not an entirely accurate paraphrasing of how my
brain works (the daily through process is more like, “potato tomato banana oh
I’ll just check the weather on my phone and oh I like the look of that band
that’s come up on Facebook I’ll have to remember to listen to it later tonight
agh where did I put my keys oh wait what was I doing again and what was I going
to do on my phone again”).
But it was to be — and on September 12, 2018 I found myself
in the crowd at Max Watt’s in Melbourne watching a band that until recently I’d
never contemplated would be one I would see live.
And I was mesmerised.
The Devil’s music is divisive
"It's too dark to see their faces."
Heavy metal music, or rather the people who love heavy metal
music, are a morally anarchic bunch. One of the great virtues of heavy metal is
the outspokenness of its adherents. If they love something, they’ll
figuratively shout it from the rooftops (think Slayer fans whose main word in their
vocabulary is SLAYER!). But that goes
both ways.
With a group like The Devil, there were detractors who made
their displeasure known.
I have spoken extensively in the past about how fortunate we
are to live in a city where we are spoilt for choice when it comes to gigs
playing hard, dark, nasty and heavy music; how the real enemy of what is popular
music played on commercial radio and not that local band who are starting out
by playing generic metal because they’re still finding their feet; and how you
don’t appreciate the value of any gig
playing any music that sounds even remotely
like what you love until you live in a town that doesn’t have weekly punk,
grind, metal, rock, stoner, noise and industrial shows.
Nevertheless, I’m not other people, so I understand that someone
who would not know what to expect could feel underwhelmed from the performance.
A major element of what makes The Devil unique is the previously mentioned
audio-visual component. In the live environment of Max Watt’s (although in my
heart it will always be the Hi-Fi Bar, just like Southern Cross Station will forever
be Spencer Street Station) the projector on which much of the performance
depended could best be described as ‘decent’. It went down to waist height and
was not so much obscured, as interrupted, by moving black-clad masked figures
intercepting the perspective of the crowd, looking, as they were, up to the
stage at an angle.
I also suspect that the gravitas of various samples may have
been lost on some of the crowd due to no other reason but for the original
sound quality of those record. For many of the tracks, the narrative, sorry, I
mean theme, is based on post-WWII or Cold War-era speeches. While those punters
with history nerd credentials would have really gotten into it, the clarity of
scratchy recordings from 60 or more years ago may have been lost in the live
environment. At least for normal – people who delight in trainspotting Eisenhower’s
military industrial complex speech or Truman’s announcement of the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima during Extinction Level Event would have loved it.
Again, if you weren’t sure what to expect, I can see how someone
going to the Therion gig, perhaps expecting bombastic from the support act,
could feel that their expectations weren’t being met.
But if you knew what you were in for, or if you love samples
(like I do!) you hopefully ‘got it’.
The performance
of the track World Of Sorrow was especially
poignant. Played over heart-wrenching footage of fires and collapsing buildings
from September 11, it plays an on-the-scene TV reporter describing eyewitness
accounts of what 9/11 truthers would later cite as the controlled demolition of 7 World Trade Center.
To be
clear: September 11 conspiracy theorists, of which Building 7 is one of the
most popular, have been repeatedly debunked. I do not subscribe to the views
expressed in lyrics (or in this case, samples) of that track, in the same way
that I don’t subscribe to lyrical themes found in Slayer lyrics, like Satanic
sacrifices or dropping nuclear weapons or getting even through violence and
murder. Nonetheless, the combination of samples, masked performance and video was
for me, an almost gut-wrenching “wow” moment.
It due to moments like these that I was mesmerised. I loved
the performance and I can say with sincerity and appreciation (rather than
pretention) that I ‘got’ what The Devil were doing.
Knowing their original music helped, as does the fact that I
love industrial music and samples. So too does being a massive history nerd.
The live performance by The Devil was, for me personally, a stunning coming
together of so many of the things I love about dark and heavy music.
Oh, and that slightly less obscure act going by the name of Therion
were up next.
As for the identities of those behind the masks who are The
Devil?
Well, I’ve got a conspiracy theory about who it might be…
but who would believe me…?
