adg211288 Spellbook is the debut full-length album by Canadian one-man death metal act Haiduk. Luka Milojica is the man behind the project, performing all vocals, guitars and bass with the drums being programmed. Haiduk’s only prior release is the 2010 demo Plagueswept, a release with a very different sound to Spellbook. Spellbook is a concept album with a theme of black magic, and each of the ten seals on the cover art represents a track on the album.

While Haiduk started with a raw atmospheric and blackened approach to death metal, Spellbook sees the music become much more polished production wise and also sets a much faster pace for the riffs. Thrash metal influences play a much more important part in the sound now with the music being very much riff based and orientated, with lead guitar sections few and far between. But with they are used, they’re just as furious as the riffs. A particular good example is how lead is used near the end of the album’s closing track Vortex. Luka tops the performance off with a strong growl, and while vocals are obviously more common than guitar leads, he takes plenty of breaks in the lyric deliver to allow full concentration on his riffs, which provide a thrashing and pummelling experience on one hand, but don’t lack atmosphere of a different kind to the demo on the other.

Despite being branded as an album, Spellbook isn’t actually much longer than Haiduk’s Plagueswept demo, although one must bear in mind that said demo was more generous on the amount of tracks that many band’s demo releases. Spellbook contains ten tracks, all in the death/thrash style and they’re all relatively short and to the point compositions. Four of them don’t even hit the three minute mark and the album is over in about thirty-three minutes. I think that’s definitely okay for Haiduk’s style, although Luka certainly proves himself capable of holding an album in this style for any period of time and I find myself easily enjoying even consecutive listens of Spellbook without getting bored.

Normally I don’t think Spellbook would be my kind of death metal but there’s an honest kind of charm that just makes the music appealing and Luka Milojica clearly has a good ear for riffs not to mention a powerful growl. He’s certainly played to his apparent strengths for this album and that’s why in my eyes the end result is such a success. It’s the kind of album that repeated listens only makes it better and I find myself highly impressed with it.

8.6/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))

UMUR Plagueswept is a demo album release by Canadian blackened death metal act Haiduk. The demo was independently released in February 2010. Haiduk is a one-man act consisting of Luka Milojica who handles guitars, bass, vocals and drum programming. Plagueswept contains 8 tracks ( 29:47 minute playing time). The two tracks that bookend the demo are instrumentals, while the 6 songs in between features vocals.

The music on Plagueswept is a kind of raw yet melodic blackened death metal. The vocals are raspy/ growling. Haiduk is actually difficult to place in either the death metal or the black metal catagory because there are equal amounts of elements from each genre in the music. A band like Unanimated comes to mind. The first thing you notice when playing the demo is the extremely raw and purposely underproduced guitar sound. It sounds great and really gives the music character. The vocals are pretty good too but not exceptional. What I enjoy most about the songs on the demo is the atmosphere though. It´s dark, harsh and cold, and while there are lots of melodic material to keep the songs memorable, it never sounds like melodeath or other more easy listening parts of the death metal genre ( which in my world is a good thing).

As Haiduk is a one-man act Luka Milojica has opted to program the drums, and while the programmed drums fortunately don´t act like a distraction, they don´t add anything extra to the music either. They are more or less just there. Other than that the musicianship is good.

Plagueswept is a promising demo release by Haiduk, and it works like a good teaser, just like a succesful demo should. Now rating demos with a rating scale designed for official albums always seem a bit unfair but there are enough qualities on Plagueswept for a 3 star rating and at times even 3.5 stars.