ALBUM REVIEW: The Trail – Demonic Death Judge

Fuzzy Finnish gun-slingers, DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE, have just released their fourth full-length album, The Trail, on Suicide Records. A band that has been flattening the stoner underground via digital playlisting, DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE have released a slew of hard hitting, down the line nuggets of stoner goodness to date. Their distinct identity, full of creative riffs, iniquitous vocals and irrepressible groove, has put them heads and shoulders above other outfits who subscribe to a genre that often breeds legions of copy paste banality. So does The Trail live up to their previous three records?

On this album, DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE display a refined capacity for songwriting, using simple and captivating riffs that dive in and out of psychedelic clouds and brutal vocal volleys, that much is sure. There is also a cohesion to this piece as a whole, with an intentional and meditative quality to their riffs; they are equally as poised when dropping into harmonica solos, as they are when brooding over soft vocal harmonies amidst the madness. The Trail opens with a Kumbayah-on-rye acoustic vignette called Cougar Charmer that unfurls into a triumphant, almost cheesy, opening gambit on Filthy as Charged. Just when your mind starts to wander a little, the track’s dominant riff plummets out of the sky with a kind of feral tenacity Tom Morello would be proud of.

Hardship contains the classic elements of the DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE formula: thoughtful lead lines soaring above churning, fuzzed out riffs and chorused shouts coming at you from all angles. Later on, a few minutes into Elevation, we get the chance to gather our bearings in a smoother-than-silk passage that calls to mind DOWN‘s Doob Interlude. These quieter moments are arguably the finest on the album, but the sophistication afforded by the jangly, LED ZEPPELIN inspired trappings peppered around the record is too often short lived.

By the time Flood arrives, it feels as though we’ve been here one too many times before; riding a 4/4 beatbox all the way to hell and back has started to get a little tiring, frustrating even – especially if you know what DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE are capable of delivering. So thank god that,Thankfully, just at this moment, the album’s finest fragment explodes out of nowhere. A sensational, crack-the-skye-right-the-hell-open with MASTODON-esque bombast erupts to make the world right again.

All told, though, it feels as if there is something missing from this album. It might be that the grit that made tracks on earlier releases like Taxbear and Churchburner so incredibly satisfying, is absent. Whether this is in the production or in the songwriting is a good question. Where DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE once took the time to bleed a riff dry in a manner of concerted and intriguing ways, they now hop a little hastily from one melodic idea to another, cautiously cutting their way along an already well-trodden path. The saving grace of The Trail is the title track, on which the newer elements of DEMONIC DEATH JUDGE’s songwriting really shine through. With extended passages of psych-drenched, synth driven meditation and expansive percussion it feels as if they are moving in the direction they should have embraced from the outset of the record.

Rating: 7/10

The Trail is out now via Suicide Records. 

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