Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, grind, black, doom, sludge, heavy, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen, we drag the blade across our palms to pledge our devotion to Finland’s Blood Chalice.
Few black metal bands approach their métier ensanguined enough to match Pori’s Blood Chalice. Uploaded to YouTube only last friday, Demo 2016 already has the wretched masses pledging their doomed lives in exchange for physical manifestations. Hey, ye clamoring hoarders, how about that Beheritian breakdown in the final track “Unholy Glorification?” How’s that for a physical product? How about how “Necromancy” sounds like Murderworks-era Rotten Sound, but chunkier and frozen yet still ablaze? This whole affair just smacks of werewolf semen and blood, world downfall and early Marduk. And there’s plenty of physicality right here for ye.
After recovering from the initial repeated listens, we reached out to Blood Chalice and got in touch with Sami Mäkynen. The organizer of Annis Metal Fest, Mäkynen is now–having hung out at “almost all of their rehearsals”–Blood Chalice’s “sort of manager.” Via email Mäkynen reveals that this intimidating new Finn-structed Satanic wehrmacht is manned by four veterans of the Pori underground: Pessi Haltsone on vox; Henri Virolainen on guitar; Pekka Iisakkala on bass; Ville-Petteri Lammasniemi on drums. Haltsone and Lammasniemi also slay in the death/thrash outfit Retaliatory Measures. That explains the desensitized muscle. But couple that blood-splattered Frazettan form with the nihilistic abandon such as that displayed by Virolainen and Iisakkala, and things might’ve gotten out of hand if not for these Finn’s stoic devotion to quick and necessarily filthy slaughter in the name of the unholy one. They call it black metal, and on the surface it is. But scratch and you’ll find a death-grind band beneath the goatskin cloaks.
Even though Blood Chalice’s Demo 2016 may not be pure black metal each man in its rank proclaims his devotion to the infernal black trade. Haltsone says he sees black metal as a way to “express a personal image of darkness.” Virolainen says he’s “been fascinated by black metal” since he first began listening to metal. While drummer Lammasniemi says bluntly: “Black metal is my way to release my disgust and hatred on this stupid world because I think black metal is the only pure and sincere thing there is.”
And although Demo 2016 may not *actually* exist in physical form yet you’ll now be able to say you heard them before most of your friends did. Plus you’ve now got another band to circle like a mama hawk would, and who doesn’t love doing that? At 5 tracks in under 10 minutes, Blood Chalice’s demo is more than an anomalous and refreshing take on black metal. It’s also a startling discovery concerning the hitherto unknown capabilities of metal at large.
You heard here it first at Demo:listen. Make sure to check next and every Friday for promising new metal.
