ALBUM REVIEW: Death Devil Magick – Servant
SERVANT have, over the course of the last few years especially, become arguably one of Germany’s best underground black metal acts, and have always felt as though they are on the cusp of breaking through onto the global stage. Ever since their debut album, 2021s Blessed By The Light Of A Thousand Stars, and again on its follow up, Aetas Ascensus in 2023, the bands sound has been incredibly strong, their image so powerful, that it seems inevitable that they might just morph into the biggest black metal act Germany has produced in the last decade at least. The bands third album, Death Devil Magick, coming just over a year since the release of their last, boasts arguably some of the bands very best material to date, and could very well see the quartet break through that illusive glass ceiling and into the upper echelons of European black metal.
Void, a short, ethereal piece of music built around minimalist guitars and ambience, is a great way to ease the listener into the record, leading seamlessly into the albums first proper track, Temple, extremely well. This opening effort blends aspects of melodic black metal with a fierce, searing intensity that, even at its most chaotic, is incredibly focused and controlled, with dancing guitar lines and razor sharp rhythms being complemented by acidic vocals, making for a cohesively powerful slab of black metal to kick things off. Sin, a decidedly harsher number with lots of rabid flourishes, speed-driven hooks and biting leads, leans prominently into a forceful sound whilst still leaving plenty of room for soaring riffs and heady synth interludes, managing to knit together the two extremes quite seamlessly, ebbing and flowing between them without these shifts feeling too jarring.
Devil brings the pace down to a mostly mid-tempo groove, with far sharper leads and less caustic moments, with the slower approach allowing some of the subtler sections within the guitars especially to come to the fore, showcasing just how broad these sinister and anthemic components are, with the vocals morphing into a tortured, savage roar to add a grating edge to proceedings. Hope takes the mid-paced template of the preceding track and applies it to a strictly atmospheric black metal style, with hypnotic guitars, steadier drumming and a cleaner tone directing this track from start to finish, and even without vocals, it’s impressively epic and impactful.
Fury reverts to the full throttle, gnarled aggression of songs like Sin, with fantastic, intricate guitar work and visceral, bellowing vocals, along with an abrasive and discordant undercurrent, making this arguably one of the strongest and most belligerent efforts on the whole album, being unflinchingly feral and bleak whilst peppering in some lighter melodicism to pierce through the sonic darkness. Death brings back some of the measured, hard rock inflected passages that made Devil so powerful, but embraces a faster, jagged kind of black metal with lots of jarring aspects, from the blistering guitars through to the machine gun precision of the drums and acerbic, throaty vocals.
Litany acts as a brilliant continuation of this harsher, bellicose style, being at times so cacophonous that it teeters on the brink of going completely off the rails, but its played with such an intense focus and skill that it still manages to incorporate lots of slick, punchy touches, being the musical apex of SERVANT’s caustic outer reaches, introducing majestic keys and polished guitars as it reaches its climax in order to gradually bring this monolithic track back down to earth.
Magick, this albums dramatic and bombastic final number, takes a slow-burning approach to the songwriting, which often went straight for the jugular, tempering this growing musical tension with Gothic keys, which couldn’t be further removed from the monstrous bark of the vocals and muscular, imaginative guitar work. It never full sees the vitriolic parts of this albums sound return, but much of what has made this such an impressive album is represented here; the grandiose lead guitars, weighty rhythms and noxious vocal performances are all out in force, and make for an incredibly diverse way to draw proceedings to a close.
Although the bands first two records are undoubtedly impressive in their own right, this album manages to up the ante with its songwriting and atmosphere, and boasts not only some of the bands most belligerent songs so far, but arguably also their catchiest to date, within its nine tracks. It’s one of those kinds of albums that has a little bit of something for black metal fans of all stripes, from the punchy Hard Rock swagger of Temple and Death through to the blistering and bellicose bludgeoning provided by the likes of Sin and Devil, with little grandiose flourishes peppered throughout that make this an incredibly well rounded and universally impressive record from start to finish.
If SERVANT hadn’t all made their mark and branded their name into the wider black metal consciousness prior to now, this album makes them one of the genre’s undeniable modern progenitors, with very few bands so early into their musical journey even coming close to matching them.
Rating: 9/10
Death Devil Magick is out now via AOP Records.
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