Chile’s Perversor, curiously one of three bands from Latin America with said moniker, brings the time capsule approach to their primitive form of extreme music. Demon Metal is a handy little EP that very believably could have been recorded in 1987 and then stashed away for years, as every element – production, riffs, grossly reverberated vocals and artwork – seems risen from the graves of the 80s.
The prevailing style on Demon Metal is undoubtedly death metal, with early Possessed and Obituary (swamp riffs in “Victory of the Legions of the Damned”) being particularly pronounced. However, many of the era’s other extreme pioneers are obvious and well-represented. Perversor makes heavy use of Celtic Frost’s signature phrase-ending drum-guitar co-riffs (opener “Detonate”) and the shuffled thrash tempos for which Warrior and company were known in their heyday. As the EP progresses, inklings of Deathcrush or A Blaze in the Northern Sky also reveal their grim visages.
The key to these songs’ success is not getting lost in trying to be a stylistic hybrid, but rather just rocking for the sake of creating some serious bangovers, and in general Perversor does their job as a primeval retro act quite well. The riffs are interesting-to-great, and the band is obviously a well-practiced unit, thanks in no small part to the excellent work of skinsman Knernet. This certainly isn’t going to appeal to those in the sheen-obsessed Behemoth camp of soundboard trickery, but if you prefer your blast beats less than spit-shined, give Demon Metal a chance. After all, at about 17 minutes, it should only hurt in the good way.
