Demonic Rage - Omen of Doom

DEMONIC RAGE - Omen of Doom (OLD TEMPLE - CD 2016)

Demonic Rage really fuckin blew my head off last year, when I’ve listened to their so expected “Venomous Wine from Putrid Bodies” album. This band is insane and together with Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Godless and Diabolical Messiah is now my favourite death metal commando from the mighty Chile. Sad thing about Demonic Rage is that they released quite many demos, splits, etc, but it’s impossible to find most of them. But Old Temple comes with help and decided to unleash killer compilation called “Omen of Doom”, which would bring together songs from quite few hard to find older Demonic Rage releases. I can only praise them for such decision. So, this CD has songs from such releases as "The Occult Formula to Desecrate Souls" EP 2011, "Sulphuric Congregation Towards the Holocaust of All Sacred and Holy" demo 2010, "The Anguish's Doomaelstrom" demo 2008, "Demo # 2" 2006 and some more mainly rehearsal recordings. All together, we have 20 tracks with 73 minutes of utterly massive, gloomy death metal.

Obviously there is huge difference in sound quality between all these releases. Some of them sound absolutely killer, some lack that massive, crushing, obscure sound, but have a decent production to say least. But you couldn’t expect it to be different, if we have some great studio stuff next to rehearsals recordings, all done within ten years or more. Luckily most of the stuff, which is on “Omen of Doom” sounds killer, so I never had a huge problem with it. And definitely Demonic Rage music should be a perfect offer for all those, who praise bands such as Incantation, Funebrarum, Disma, Demilich, Disgrace, Morpheus Descends, Drawn and Quartered and so on. So, we speak of rather slow paced (but with many fast parts), insanely heavy and evil sounding death metal, with very low, demonic vocals and not even a single moment of melodic, softer music. No, from start to finish this is totally brutal shit. And since I like Demonic Rage a lot, this compilation is a great feast for me, especially as I only own one release from all those, which are included here – I’m talking about excellent "The Occult Formula to Desecrate Souls" cassette EP.

Actually "The Occult Formula…” songs are surely the best, including killer Profanatica cover or fantastic songs from studio rehearsal session, especially total mindblowing “Ascending Heresies in Blasphemy”. It’s so fast, so fuckin vicious and brutal and you gonna low it. It’s also very short song, but later you have a real monster called “Desecrating the False Divinity”, which is almost nine minutes long crusher. Yes, definitely all five songs from "The Occult Formula…” tape are the best stuff on this CD, also because the production of it is killer. “Sulphuric Congregation…” is also really damn good, even if it contains just two songs. But the same I can say about “The Anguish's Doomaelstrom” demo or “Demo #2” from 2006. The sound quality goes lower with demo recordings from 2004 and 2003, but it surely doesn’t spoil the listen anyway. I only don’t like one live song from this CD, but that one ends the album, so I can always skip it.

So, very good compilation from Demonic Rage here. “Omen of Doom” is huge portion of monstrous, sepulchral death metal, with various quality, but mainly with the great stuff. So I strongly recommend them. Get their full length album (which actually contains many of these songs, obviously recorded again with even stronger sound), if you don’t have it yet and get this compilation also. And support them!

Final rate: 70/100