The Devil, not like other heavy metal bands - supporting the Therion Australian tour

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."

I loved what I heard and saw. But The Devil’s music is divisive.

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…?