MEDIEVAL DEMON
“MEDIEVAL NECROMANCY”
Album Review by Dark Juan

6/10

Medieval Demon are: Amusingly named…

Lord Apollyon – Drums and keyboards
Sirokous – Vocals
Jim Necrochrist – Guitars and bass. I’m sorry. Necrochrist was hilarious enough but fucking Jim? Where in the name of everything unholy did Jim come from? It’s possibly the most non black metal name ever to be mentioned in a black metal band’s membership! Congratulations, sir, you are truly the world’s first black metal Jim. I’m still fucking giggling and all I have had to drink today is tea. Oh, hang on. I went out for lunch at a friend of Mrs. Dark Juan’s and had two thirds of a bottle of wine. Shortly before going to buy a sofa from a gendarme. Now I don’t know if you know France, but the gendarmes are a) armed, b) have no discernible sense of humour, and c) live in barracks with their families. So I turned up at a barracks (because gendarmes are MILITARY police) half cut and muttering to the incredibly sexy female gendarme manning the gate about buying a sofa from M. Guillet in schoolboy French whilst trying to not appreciate her figure too openly (they do like quite form fitting uniforms in France) and losing all intelligence as my blood flow was shunted south. This, bizarrely, provoked a massive friendly smile from her which just about destroyed any intelligence I had left, some rapid fire French, some kind of answering squeak from me, and I wasn’t immediately arrested and imprisoned. I should have been. I’m sure I had committed several offences with her in my head within 20 seconds. I even came out of the barracks with a sofa. All in all, a reasonable adventure. The last time I met an incredibly sexy female gendarme I was busily trying to kick the shit out of her at kick boxing practice. But her arse, man. Tight yoga pants. Ohhhhhhhhh….I kept getting distracted… Oh yes. Band members!
Damien Omen – Drums. Mr. Omen appears to like Hollywood films about the Devil. He could literally do a Papa Emeritus thing here and become Damien: Omen 2!

Now I have managed to wrench myself back to writing about records, and not about what I might like to do with incredibly sexy female gendarmes in or out of uniform I can tell you about Medieval Demon. They are Greek, from Athens, and pleasingly Satanic considering they are from a quite devout country. The downside is that the early nineties just seem to be appearing in musical terms in Greece. They are a black metal band in the classic sense of the word. As in the world’s shittiest corpse paint, wearing “mysterious” cloaks and holding candelabra and attempting to look threatening with a large sword and makeup that basically looks like Siouxsie Sioux got caught in a sudden shower outside after snogging The Cure’s Robert Smith. All it does do in fact, is make me giggle. A lot. Black metal done poorly is utterly hilarious. In this, though, they do share the same aesthetic as the early DIY black metal bands, who all looked utterly terrible at best and downright hilarious at worst. Anyway, their album Medieval Necromancy is currently what’s being blasted through my head and there are plenty of black metal staples to tick off the Dark Juan Black Metal Cliché Checklist Of Satan’s Underpants Of Doom. Satan is mentioned fairly frequently, there are mentions of black forests (possibly involving some kind of horrendous doom, but I am not concerned enough to go and find lyrics to translate into the shrieking and grunting that passes for vocals here), there’s women making sexy noises (hopefully not gendarmes. I have plans…) who are supposed to be fucking Satan, there’s swirly keyboards, baritone choirs, church organs, a singer who howls a lot, wolves howling and there is the obligatory Satanic chant on the song entitled Blackmoon Sacrifice. All of which is tolerably enjoyable. Which makes a change because black metal is easy to turn into comedy, or to just be really, really terrible at.

Another entertaining thing about Medieval Demon are the song titles, which are the kind of word salad genius that only non-native English speakers can come up with. Anyway, what do they sound like? Second song in, Spells Of The Akkadian Priests, might as well be Enslaved’s Slaget I Skogen Bortenfor. The production is identical, as are a couple of the riffs, the keyboard sound and the overall arrangement of the song. Bizarrely, this is not a bad thing because it gives me a reference point to base this review on. Whilst it is 2018 in the rest of the world, it is clearly 1993 in Greece, musically. Next, they will be discovering nu-metal! Now I’m going to have a rant. Put your children in another room. There will be swearing. Why the FUCK do black metal bands all choose the same shitty production job? Why do they all sound like wasps in fucking jam jars? It’s a musically complex and interesting genre, and I for one want to HEAR THE FUCKING INSTRUMENTS PROPERLY! Stop recording guitars on cheap tape players underwater! Stop having really excellent drummers and burying them so far down in an already shite mix that all I can hear is crash cymbals, misery and hi toms. Unless there’s a drum roll, in which case it immediately sounds like a lot of pans falling down some stone stairs. Stop making the bass more buzzy than Buzz McSuperbuzz travelling on the Megabuzz from Ultrahypermegabuzz City. I want to hear bass guitar, not some kind of fizzing bullshit in the background, occasionally audible above the shrieking and caterwauling. Stop putting black metal vocalists so far forward in the mix, no fucker can ever understand a word they utter anyway. It’s the most redundant job ever, writing black metal lyrics. The singer is just going to go, “Guuuh, guuuhhh, waaaa, guuh grrrr RRRRRRRR guuuuuuuh WAAAAAAAOOOOOHHHHHAAAAAAAA,” a lot, which if you read the lyric sheet, apparently translates as something like, “Disciples despair of the black night of Satan’s reign, your churches will burn and we will rape all your women as they lament on the altars of god in the fiery wreckage of his church.” It’s all lies. They made that shit up on the spot. That’s what I just did. And anyway, they wouldn’t be able to catch anyone under the sheer weight of leather body armour, bulletbelts, studded leather things and makeup they all drag themselves around in. Also, if Satan is going to basically take the world and turn it into some gigantic charnel house of horror, death and misery, why the fuck do these shocking tarts want him to come to Earth? If Satan is going come here to be a colossal ballbag, then he can piss off back to Hell with my boot up his arse. The big red Jessie. I’ll rip his nipples off. Also, on the record cover Satan really does look like he is playing air guitar.

Anyway… Medieval Demon sound like Enslaved. A lot. Of course being Greek there are the occasional nods towards the slightly more melodic leanings of Rotting Christ, and Portugal’s Moonspell are also an obvious influence. Basically, they sound like the golden era of black metal, just after all the unfortunate murdering and church burning. They sound like Norway did in 1993, just before all the classic black metal bands discovered melody and actually singing properly. This, however, is no bad thing. I discovered black metal through The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh by Cradle of Filth (when they used to bill themselves as “The U.K.s only avant-garde black metal band”) and the seminal In The Nightside Eclipse by Emperor, a record that represents the state of the art of classic black metal for me. To fit into this classic period with your sound and oeuvre is a good, if not very experimental thing. I like this record. It’s charming, enjoyable and traditional. What it isn’t is envelope pushing, original or jawdropping. It’s one for the vaults, when you want to wallow in a bit of nostalgia, but you’re bored of Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk, and your umpteenth listening to Impaled Nazarene won’t cut it. This is where I’m going to leave this review, because I have started to think about the lady gendarme again….

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Medieval Demon 6/10 for an enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable record. That equates to your average human sacrifice to Satan in your secret church and your subsequent arrest for being a Satanic twat.

TRACKLIST

Chthonic (Spelt it right at last!) Curse
Spells Of The Akkadian Priests
Invisible Black Magic Ritual (How would you know? I mean come on. How is Satan going to turn the Earth into some kind of DIY playroom like the Torture Garden if he can’t even see the ritual?)
Les Litanies De Satan (This made me laugh out loud. This made Mrs. Dark Juan jump, Igor the Evil One to start barking, Hodgson the Medium Dog to emit a smell that could have been described as hell, and Zeus the big dog to open one eye, look mournfully at me and move his head to a more uncomfortable position in my crotch. First of all for some reason they recorded the panting women speaking French. This immediately reminded me of Je T’Aime by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, which was a 70s hit based entirely on those two basically fucking over some gentle Hammond organ and jazz drums. It is a magnificently hilarious beast of pop music which upset a few grannies in Lowestoft. Secondly, it’s about as erotic and sensual as an eight hour shift making crisps in the factory where I work. Thirdly, the poor women have no acting experience and make it sound like Satan is the dullest fuck ever.)
Moldy Wings of Death (Yes. I have used the rubbish American spelling. They did first. Also, would win an award for most uninspired song title of all time.)
Ancient Evil In The Woods (Why in black metal is it always the fucking woods? If you know there’s evil in them, stay the fuck away! Woods aren’t even that special. What about ancient evil in the sacrificial cavern of Gnbijrtjiogroj, eh?)
Medieval Necromancy (This is the kind of word salad I’m talking about. Necromancy has been around since the beginning of language development. Medieval is just a word. This ranks among the great word salad titles of black metal. The current championship leader is still The Hymn of the Ancient Misanthropic Spirit Of The Forest by Lord Belial. Oh look, fucking woods again.)
The Great He-Goat (Cue immediate thoughts of classic hammer horror version of The Devil Rides Out and the Duc De Richlieu expostulating to Rex Van Ryn, “The goat of Mendes! The Devil himself!” in a cut-glass English accent, whilst hamming it up so much he’s basically chewing the scenery.)

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