ALBUM REVIEW: Through Holes Shine The Stars – Demon Head
Off the back of celebrating their tenth anniversary in 2023, DEMON HEAD return with their fifth album Through Holes Shine The Stars. The album’s title briefly conjures up romantic if slightly melancholic notions, but the reality is stark, raw, and desperate. Trying to pin down the record’s true sound is near impossible. The eight tracks incorporate elements of hard rock, doom, metal, and even indie wrapped up in an mistakably Scandinavian parcel. But above all else, the album is gloomy, dark, and emotionally heavy. There are no light moments or flashes of positivity, each track is a draining experience.
As an album, Through Holes Shine The Stars peaks early. Aside from a cluttered vocal arrangement, opening track The Chalice is crisp and sharp, with more in common with mid-00s indie than Danish heavy metal. The central guitar melody brilliantly twinkles and dances between the wails of desperation that form the lead vocal. It’s a track with plenty of pace and that continues into Draw Down The Sky. This time things get a little heavier against a galloping rhythm section that pushes the track along. But just as it plateaus a great guitar solo darts through the middle third to breathe new life into proceedings.
From there, the album begins its true downward spiral into the darkness. Our Winged Mother is full of gothic-tinged brooding and rich production, but it’s plodding and lacks focus. This causes the song to meander with no clear direction or spark. The theme continues into Every Flatworm which lumbers rather than dazzles for the most part, although there are brief signs of life at the halfway mark.
Wildfire opens with an organ that gives the track an almost horror film touch, but it’s not long before normal service is resumed. Aside from a rolling drum riff, much of the track is stripped back, giving the vocals space and time to shine, while the guitar solo sounds like something pulled from a GHOST record. By contrast, Deeper Blades is a curious little song that positively skips along. The delicate vocals and melodies are much lighter than the rest of the album, with the power and emotion coming through the various guitar licks.
The penultimate track Frost is another epic, but it feels more like a journey than a hard slog. The guitar work, especially in the second half, is sensational, and it offers brief flashes of light against a typically bleak landscape. When compared to some of the earlier tracks, there’s a whole lot more going on. This makes it so much easier for the listener to invest in and go along for the ride. This Vessel Is Willing is described as the album’s epilogue, but it’s a conclusion it would have been better without. It comes off as a recording of a glorified jam session and feels like an odd way to end things. While Frost was a fitting and natural conclusion, This Vessel Is Willing is a needless bonus scene.
Through Holes Shine The Stars is a strange album. There’s something new to discover on every listen, but it struggles to give the listener a hook to return to. While the decision to never have one isolated vocal is an interesting one, the band could have done more with it. Lyrically they’re pushing and extending themselves, and that provides some good moments, but too often they get lost in songs that don’t go anywhere. There’s clearly the basis of an interesting and diverse album here, but the execution falls short.
Rating: 6/10
Through Holes Shine The Stars is set for release on September 20th via Svart Records.
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