Nightfly Released in 2007, Servants Of The Unlight is the debut album from Swedish death metal band Demonical. It’s clearly of the old school persuasion featuring the raw guitar sound pioneered in death metal circles by the likes of Entombed and Dismember. Whilst you won’t find anything original here and it’s pretty much death metal by numbers, Demonical have a clear grasp on what’s required to pull off a decent old school style album.

All the trademarks are present and correct aided by strong musicianship with the usual array of frantic blast beats/double kick drums, crushing and raw guitar riffs and decent vocals. Whilst there’s nothing that particularly stands out, equally there’s nothing bad either. Songs like Revel In Misanthropia, Slaughter Of All Hope and United In Torture are enjoyable enough but just lack that edge to make them particularly memorable. Some changes of pace add some variety like on Burned Alive, its intro having a doom feel until it kicks in to top gear. A bit more of this would have been most welcome.

I found this review quite difficult to write, not because Servants Of The Unlight is a bad album, it is in fact quite a good one. It just lacks a distinctive edge to set it apart from the pack and therefore it was difficult to say anything original or particularly meaningful about it. Nevertheless you could do far worse than devote just over half an hour of your time checking this out.