THE DEVIANT

Sometimes a record brings absolutely nothing new to the table, isn't technically impressive, and seems likely to be filed among the many metal albums that slip through the cracks each year. But the material enclosed will be delivered with such heart-stopping intensity and malevolent gusto, the band manages to knock it out of the park with sheer extremity alone.

THE DEVIANT, the new band featuring former GEHENNA vocalist Dolgar, manages to do just that on this, their debut. If you like that virulent, death-and-thrash-inflected strain of Norwegian black metal, this will be right up your alley (think ZYKLON or maybe 1349). Individual songs, personality, dynamics, charisma — forget about it. The world of THE DEVIANT is a blasted, scorched-earth nightmare, where anything still living is beaten into numbed submission.

But the drums are a friggin' avalanche, the riffs never lose their razorwire potency, and Dolgar is a grim, sardonic, scowling bastard overseeing the whole bloody battlefield. There's tons of blast-beating mania approaching KRISIUN-like levels of sonic overkill (without that band's penchant for sweep-picking shred solos),and when a song "slows down", the band simply trades snare-drum blasting for machine-gun double-kick drumming, with no change in the speed riffage. It's a bit taxing, but the band's systematic choking off of every ounce of breathing space actually creates an atmosphere (or maybe an anti-atmosphere). It's oppressive, crushing and suffocating, and strangely compelling for just that reason.

"Ravenous Deathworship" is impassive, relentless and vicious, and while that may be all it has going for it, it's enough.