Servant returns for third album.
In 2024, Farago (guitar/vocals), Samael (guitar), Thanatos (bass) and Apophis (drums), all also members of Under the Night Sky, sign to AOP Records and announce the release of Death Devil Magick.
The album opens with the calm but dark melody of Void, which eventually becomes heavy and haunting, before giving way to Temple, where darkness literally ignites, giving us a piercing sound anchored in an Old School dynamic. The vocal parts strengthens the composition’s aggressiveness, which doesn’t hesitate to use its scathing leads to advance to Sin, where keyboards join the four musicians to create a sometimes more ethereal approach, contrasting with the angrier passages. We also have an intense passage before the musicians accelerate again, but the melodies have changed, as confirmed by Devil and its ambient coldness, which only ceases to let the rhythmics explode and take off at full speed. Some slower passages allow the band to develop airy harmonics, as on the opening moments of Hope, where dissonance gradually develops, finally letting the drums in to help us venture through this instrumental composition. The vocal parts return on Fury, where the vocalist’s rage is matched only by the savagery of the rhythm section, which often erupts and spins at full speed before revealing heady melodies such as on this misty break. The sound eventually fades before giving way to Death and its haunting choruses, which sometimes disappear when the band intensifies its riffs, but the general atmosphere remains in this opposition between quietude and oppression before Litany begins, and the least we can say is that the sound won’t remain calm for very long. Cutting-edge sounds mingle with energetic parts, but the break offers a hypnotic lull that tints the final section, followed by Magick and its occult tones that lead us into a rhythm section that’s slightly more upbeat than usual, but which is obviously overshadowed by melancholy guitars accompanied by vociferations until the sound sinks into nothingness.
Servant forge their Black Metal with scathing melodies and aggressive sounds, but also with a touch of dark sweetness. Death Devil Magick is a highly rhythmic album that’s sure to find a place among music lovers.
85/100
