### Pandemonium: Hellspawn

#### 20/10/10 || Habakuk

Valiant Poland and death metal – five words combined that make heads rattle. And just as I’m fluent with my Megadeth, Pandemonium is with Angel Corpse meets Vader. For some reason, this album of theirs was sent to us three years after its release, but then again, who am I to judge promo strategies. These four Poles have been around for quite some time, and they definitely know their craft: Combining the catchiness of recent Vader outputs with the screeching black-tinged vileness of Angel Corpse. The result came out quite pleasant, I must say. Rarely does a label-sent make it into my regular playlist in an instant, let alone receive lots of spins.

Ten varied songs clocking in at 32 minutes in total provide the inclined listener with a fine dish of intense, double-bass heavy up-tempo death metal that avoids repetition as much as possible. That is not to say that they include fusion jazz and Pan Pipes, but within the set and confined boundaries of death/a-little-black metal, Pandemonium manage well not to blur all songs together to a pile of Extreme. Instead, they work with a variety of tempos and rhythms to give the songs some room to breathe. Which translates to incorporating a few subtle dissonant micro-melodies, thrashing speed parts, chainsaw guitar/blast-beat action and quite a few half-time breaks. The result: it’s actually all quite accessible despite the rather relentless style.

While the production leans more towards the Angel Corpse side with a similar, sawing guitar tone, snappy bass drum sound and loud cymbals and a very basic, deep bass in the back, the vocal delivery sounds a lot like Vader – which is actually my only beef with this. The vocals sound like a rather bad impersonation of Piotr, but it only took a few songs for me to accept them and get over it.

You will by now have noticed that I named two bands a lot whose album is not for review here – I, too, am aware of that. To those easily annoyed by such shortcomings I can only say that once you hear “Hellspawn”, you will agree with me that fans of either of these bands will find something to suit their tastes here. I, for one, sure as hell did.

- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Mystic Productions
- Website: Pandemonium MySpace
- Band
- Paul: vocals, guitars
- Mark: guitars
- Michael: bass
- Simon: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Frost
- 02. Hellspawn
- 03. Hypnotic dimension
- 04. The larva plague
- 05. Hatesound eternal
- 06. Die hard
- 07. Destination of hellfire
- 08. Emperor diabolic
- 09. The legion
- 10. Furious dogs