Review by Adam M on December 14, 2018.

Deceased perform a form of death metal that is heavily influenced by old school acts, but brings modern presence to the table. There is the theatricality of a King Diamond release combined with the old school death metal of a Dismember or Entombed album. The entire thing is very colorful.

There are a number of guitar riffs present and these are always performed as magnificently as possible. The album gets its groove on numerous times throughout these songs. One gets the impression that an old school album is distilled into a more modern framework with this album as it goes along. As this death metal feeling is created it is thrown into the context of a concept album like King Diamond does. This makes the entire thing more epic than it would normally be and adds to the appeal of the work. The album isn’t perfect, however. It is one upped by the theatricality of King Diamond at times and the death metal has been performed better as well. While it might not be the perfect death metal record, there are so many things to like with this release that you won’t help but become attached to it. If the band brought a more modern production job to the mix and made this have more impact it would be even more viable.

As it stands, Ghostly White is a classy old school death metal release that has some slight thrash tendencies here and there. It comes recommended to fans of the band’s previous material as well as those that like their death metal given an epic and riff-centric feeling to it. This album does have an atmosphere and it adds to the ghostly nature of the album. When all is added up, we have a strong album on our hands.

Rating: 7.7 out of 10

Review by Vladimir on June 11, 2024.

Producing and releasing a black metal demo in this overpopulated world of music sometimes feels like shooting at the pitch-black sky in a hope that your bullet might hit something in the air, but on the other hand, it is a good way to showcase what you’ve got and what you give as a musician who is walking the footsteps of veteran bands who started out the same way in their youth. Case and point here are the Russian one-man band Teufelsdom, from Saint Petersburg, which had recently released its first demo Смерть, Проникающая В Мир Духа on June 6th, 2024 via the label Храм Больного Звука. If you are someone who is truly passionate and always curious to discover new obscure stuff in the underground scene, then you should take a ride with me on this short journey. 

From the very get-go, this demo introduces the predominantly frosty and necro black metal, which sounds like it was filled with the dark essence made by the Slavic goddess of death and winter. Throughout the entire demo, the general output is very misanthropic and death-defying, with a cold and melancholic atmosphere that flows through the raw performance of Teufelsdom. Style-wise, I’d say that it’s a bit of everything, combining works of early 90’s Norwegian black metal classics, primarily bands like early Darkthrone and first two Burzum albums, along with some other elements from other bands such as Nargaroth and Judas Iscariot. Overall, it’s a very short demo that provides a brief glance at the starting point of Teufelsdom, with its 14-and-a-half-minute runtime that gives a nice glimpse of this musical entity, which is concluded with an instrumental acoustic outro track 'Смерть, Проникающая В Мир Духа' that closes the first chapter and slowly opens a new one. 

The songwriting is for the most part very simple and straightforward like with any other traditional black metal band out there, however there are plenty of dynamics as well with the frequent tempo changes and the constant switching back and forth rhythmic formula. There isn’t much to say about this demo so far, but I will give it to you that it does have a pretty solid start and it transitions pretty well from one song to another, almost like a story that goes from one part to another, with plenty of things happening along the way. The simplistic tremolo picking riffs, along with the dynamic drum patterns, do a pretty good job at keeping the song flow steady, while also maintaining the frequent atmosphere that keeps the attention going from start to finish. There aren’t any memorable riffs per say, but they are not weak or thin by any means, in fact there are some nice open chords that give this eerie and melancholic vibe that just captures the right mood for the song. What stood out to me about the demo was the cover art by Brazilian artist Yan Dexxxtröyer, who pretty much gave us a sketchy art in a simple hand-drawn style that is in spirit with the obscure black metal demos of the late 80’s and early 90’s, and it does manage to capture the musical essence of Teufelsdom. 

To sum things up, this demo isn’t outstanding or captivating in any particular way, but it is nonetheless pretty good for a demo produced in this day and age for fans of obscure and oldschool black metal. It certainly did a good job at giving a starting point for an entity which can gradually develop into something much meaner and menacing in the near future, so I hope that we will get some good stuff from Teufelsdom in the years to come. If you want to check out this demo, feel free to do so, because I am sure that some of you may like it for what it is.

Rating: 7 out of 10