Brit hopefuls Devastator whip up a very pleasant storm on Baptised in Blasphemy, their very pleasant new mini-LP for Clobber Records. Hailing from Derbyshire, I’m pleased to report they eschew the temptation to sound like they come from Essen or Stockholm, preferring instead to remind listeners of a certain age (I.E. me) of names from Britain’s glorious past of noise making like The Blood and Warfare as well as the more obvious Venom and Motörhead.
It’s not all the metal equivalent of Last Night of the Proms, however; Fans of Yank noisemongers Midnight might find something to like in the coruscating Send Them To Hell, and, strangely, I sometimes detect a hint of Razor‘s Stace ‘Sheepdog’ Mclaren on the rip-roaring Death Slut despite the song itself sounding like a humungous mashup of my old Onslaught and Varukers records…
… But enough of the comparisons. The salient feature to note here is that Devastator, despite all the dormant noises they’ll re-animate in your head, are a very real and present danger to your ears. They attack the job at hand with vigour and blackhearted verve, with the maturity of the penultimate track, Spiritual Warfare, pointing to the band’s capacity to expand and develop beyond the parameters they’ve set themselves for this release. The lead work of Richard Bateman on this track is staggeringly good, leaving the listener in no doubt that these blokes have the smarts and the chops to prosper further afield in the world of metal should the enjoyment of playing stuff like this pall over time.
Hopefully that will take the form of this band developing and growing rather than jacking it in, because on the evidence of this twenty five minutes of music Devastator have a very bright future indeed.
Baptised in Blasphemy releases on July 10th.
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