Devenial Verdict presents its sophomore album.
Active in Finland since 2006, the band presented demos and EPs before working on their first full-length. In 2024, Riku Saressalo (vocals), Okko Tolvanen (drums, Spiteborn, Rätäk), Sebastian Frigren (guitar, Dirt, Nuclear Omnicide, Rätäk) and Antti Poutanen (bass, Church of the Dead, ex-Hooded Menace) are ready to offer us Blessing of Despair, on Transcending Obscurity Records.
Oppression doesn’t waste a single second, taking over from I Have Become the Sun, where the dissonant rhythm follows the initial breath, welcoming powerful screams coupled with a frantic or pachydermic rhythm. The band surprises us with an eerie soaring clean-sounding break, but the quietude obviously doesn’t last, and we’re confronted with a new surge that leads us to the equally aggressive Garden of Eyes and its crushing groove. The composition remains very jerky and doesn’t hesitate to make use of screeching harmonics while remaining catchy, but Moon-Starved isn’t far away and develops an eerie atmosphere by anchoring itself in darkness thanks to shifting riffs, even allowing a gentle pause before the final, which leads to Blessing of Despair and its strange tones. Some passages are clearly disquieting, while others surprise us with their complexity and liveliness as well as their constancy, but the musicians give us a moment’s respite with Shunned Wander, where a gentle intoxicating melody is at work, before being tarnished by The Quietus and its saturation that would weigh down any serenade. Still, there are a few misty moments that easily become abrasive, before the sound takes on more martial tones on the energetic Solus, whose initial fury is later contained in more majestic elements, then fully unleashed by convoluted complexity. A new episode of appeasement with the opening moments of Counting Silence, but as you’d expect, it’s crushed by the band’s suffocating influences, but occasionally survives thanks to Prog influences, before once again being crowded out by strength. The track finally gives way to Cold Lantern, with its hauntingly repetitive atmosphere that makes for a tortured lullaby as unexpected as it is ideal, and is followed by A Curse Made Flesh, which is certainly anguishing but quite haunting on its first half, then adorns itself with its usual saturation while retaining its slow side that makes it fade away naturally.
Devenial Verdict is a very versatile band, moving effortlessly from devastating rage to heady slowness. Blessing of Despair also features a large number of pauses, allowing us to digest the complexity of the tracks and better appreciate them.
85/100
Hello and first of all, thank you very much for your time! How could you introduce the band Devenial Verdict without using any musical label, such as “Death Metal”?
Riku Saressalo (vocals): Hello and thank you for having us!
Antti Poutanen (bass): We feel our music is about storytelling and emotions and creating mental images as sounds. I would sometimes even use the word visual or cinematic.
Where does the name Devenial Verdict come from, and how do you link it to the music you play?
Antti: Our original bass player came up with the name almost 20 years ago and it just stuck. It’s a made up word based on the old biblical term venial verdict « be allowed into heaven ». Because we wanted to be metal we added the de-venial to imply we would be judged to go to hell. So I guess you have that blasphemous element to our music from the name the guys came up with when they were like 15-16 years old.
The band is about to release its second full-length, Blessing of Despair. How do you feel about it? Do you already have any feedback?
Riku: We are very happy with the album, everything seemed to fall into place very easily with this album. We’ve already received some reviews (such as yours) that have been very positive! We’ve played most of the songs at our live shows so far and the audience reactions to them have been fantastic.
How would you sum Blessing of Despair’s identity up in only three words?
Riku: Despair, misery, beauty.
Antti: Melancholy, Hope and Desolation.
How did the creation process happen for Blessing of Despair? Did you notice some changes or evolutions compared to the previous EPs and the latest album?
Sebastian Frigren (guitars): The composition itself happened in a really short period of time in the fall of 2020. And the arranging of the material started immediately after the release of our debut album. I think the evolution and the changes compared to our former material is that we really put thought into the little details such as drum and bass synchronization, bridges and all around rehearsing routine. I also think that we entered the studio more prepared than ever before which made us feel really comfortable when it came to tracking those songs!
Antti: We really started to find our sound later, if you look at where we started in early 2000 with death/grind type sound and the evolution with the EP’s towards more mid-tempo, adding the atmospheric elements little by little. Soulthirst in 2016 is where we really started to find our own identity and things really locked into place as one might say. Earlier we took our time with the song writing, playing them live for some time before recording them. With Blessing of Despair we had a different experience. After we had recorded Ash Blind the songs of Blessing of Despair were all made in a very short period of time, and then we spent time polishing them and being more mature about them. To be honest also technology has played a part since it’s much easier to write demos in 2020 than it was in 2012 when we would have to go to the practice place and put a mobile phone inside a beanie and record demos like that.
What about the artwork, how did you choose Mariusz Lewandowski’s artwork?
Antti: I was doom scrolling instagram in 2019 and came up with an image from national geographic with a volcano eruption and I pitched the idea to the band and we liked the colors and the theme but sourcing the image was impossible. I’ve always been a fan of surreal art like Dali, Giger, Beksinski and Lewandowski. Then when I saw the artwork for Ash Blind in his instagram I knew it had to be it. When we signed with Transcending Obscurity we pitched the idea and they were on board immediately. Later I found out that Transcending Obscurity had used Lewandowski multiple times earlier and had a connection and history with him. Luckily for us the Ash Blind cover was available and suited the album perfectly. Now with the Blessing of Despair we naturally felt we wanted to continue with Lewandowski and found the perfect artwork from his collection to fit us again. Now with his unfortunate death the future of using his artwork is uncertain. We feel that the music distracts the visual language so our 3rd album might need a totally different kind of artwork than the previous two.
About the album itself, the band’s sound has always been anchored in Death Metal, but how would you describe your own dissonant touch? Are there any bands you would consider as sound-inspiration?
Antti: We consider ourselves a Death Metal band and let others do the additional labels according to their own preference or vision. It is not a huge secret that we are all huge fans of Ulcerate, Meshuggah and Morbid Angel. The dissonance is not an end all thing that everything we do must have it, it’s more that we love dynamics and that songs/albums have like this feeling or air, time, desperation and heaviness. It’s not a conscious thing but also having just one guitarist probably gives us more chances to use the dissonance without making it too chaotic but still sounding full of despair.
Seba: I want to be transparent with this one. When Antti showed us Ulcerate’s Destroyers of All, I think that was the moment when “the rest of our lives” began. Ulcerate made me realize that it’s not just about riffs, beats and growls but it is about so much more. It’s about painting landscapes, transmitting emotions and being a tool for dealing with things that cannot be described with words.
Do you have a favorite song on this album? Or maybe the hardest one to achieve for the album.
Seba: My favourite track is A Curse Made Flesh and Solus would be the most fun and also the most challenging one to play!
Riku: My favorite songs from the record are Garden of Eyes, because it’s so much fun to play live and gets the crowd really riled up, and The Quietus since it’s very different from our other songs.
Antti: Cold Lantern was definitely the hardest song to record for us and we took most time working on it in the studio. We were so lucky to get Jason from Misery Index to do guest vocals on the track. Transforming his performance to our live without him is definitely going to be a challenge we are happy to tackle.
Where do you find your inspiration to create music and lyrics?
Seba: The inspiration can be born from basically everything – it can be a song, a noise, a smell, a memory, a story, a picture or a scene from a movie. But mostly for me it all starts with the emotions that words can’t describe and then trying to tell those unwritten words with notes.
Riku: Pretty much the same for the lyrics, I get inspired by everything around me – sometimes it can be a phrase in a book or a scene in a movie and then the lyrics just start pouring in. I write about my own experiences and feelings but I like to write about them in a storytelling and descriptive way.
Antti: Our music is an outlet for all the negative energies in our lives and around us. So it’s a way to turn these kinds of things into a positive. A friend of ours tried to commit suicide and luckily failed and is still with us today, but that event and all that went to it was one of the major inspirations for Blessing of Despair. Lyrical inspirations deal with the seasonal depression and long dark winters in Finland among other things.
Do you think you improved yourself as a musician and songwriter with this new record?
Riku: 100% yes. I’ve started to experiment more with my voice and what I can do with it. My vocals used to be extremely guttural and you couldn’t really understand the lyrics at all. My lyrics were also more of a collection of words rather than lyrics and I wanted to express myself more with Ash Blind. I try to enunciate the words clearly and make them as intelligible as possible.
Seba: Definitely yes. As stated before, our approach, when it comes to arranging songs and putting ideas together, have improved a lot. And basically we’ve tried to make music that’s in our comfort zone when it comes to technicality. Music that has space and music that is really fun to play live! I think that if the main purpose is to push physical boundaries, it sooner or later takes all the fun from the actual playing. Maybe the boundaries can be pushed elsewhere; How slow can we play? How to create an interesting theme with only three notes or with only one riff? What if a drum track doesn’t have any cymbals? The list goes on and on.
Antti: Most definitely, you can see the growth from album to album. Musically, technically, and also how we write songs and how we work on them together. We really enjoy spending time together and working together and you can definitely hear that we have been working towards the same end goal since 2012.
I unfortunately never had the opportunity to catch one of your live shows, how do you feel about playing live? What can we expect from Devenial Verdict’s live performance?
Riku: Playing live is the main attraction for me! The audience bleeds that special energy and I feel invigorated by it, all the barely contained chaos and excitement. Our live shows are brutal and we’re very confident with our live performances – we’ve played close to a hundred shows with this line-up so far so our set is very tight and well honed.
Antti: Intensity, atmosphere meets heaviness that’s right in your face. As I said before we have been together quite a long time and you can definitely hear that in our live performances. Of course I’m a bit biased but you should definitely come check us out if we come to a town or festival near you.
By looking on the internet (and the website setlist.fm), I only see a handful of shows in Finland, your country, and one at the Transcending Obscurity Fest last year. Do you plan to play abroad? Do you already have concrete plans?
Riku: Setlist.fm isn’t really that widely used in Finland so it gives a somewhat wrong impression. We’ve played a lot of live shows during the years and are very confident in our live presentation. Our aims are of course to play abroad since it’s one of our dreams, to share our music to audiences in all the corners of the world. We have plans and are constantly working towards them.
Antti: Yeah, Finland is not big on setlist.fm, especially in the underground. I think we have played around 120 shows in Finland alone, and a handful of shows in Sweden, Estonia, Russia, Lithuania and Prague (Transcending Obscurity Fest) so far. We’d really like to play more shows abroad and bring our live sound to our fans all over the world! At Transcending Obscurity Fest we were able to connect with our awesome label mates Diskord, Dysgnostic, Crypts of Despair to name a few we would love to tour Europe with. So tell your local venue/festival promoter to get in contact and let’s make it happen!
I also noticed the band had some kind of “pause” between 2016 and 2020, how did you live this moment as a band? What motivated you to “come back” at Helsinki Deathfest, then record the albums?
Riku: We did have a small pause there, mostly due to other things in life needing our full attention and other bands. We were in contact a lot even though we weren’t that active, as we are friends that just happen to play in a band. We had these songs ready for a long time and wanted to get them released, and actually most of the album was already recorded before the Helsinki Death Fest. That Helsinki Death Fest was the first time we played the album from front to back and we felt there was something special there so that gave us just that extra push that got us to finish the record.
Antti: We have always taken our time with the music but we have stayed active ever since our lineup stabilized from 2012 onwards. We had started recording Ash Blind in 2019 when covid hit, and then due to logistical, raw material shortages and the fact every other band just like us had recorded 1-2 albums during the lockdown slowed down the initial release of the albums. We of course have day jobs and families that limit how much Death Metal one can do but we try to play live as much as we can, and hopefully more in the future.
You collaborate with the label Transcending Obscurity for two albums now, how is the relationship between you?
Riku: The relationship Transcending Obscurity has been very good, the communication with Kunal has been easy and relaxed and we are in constant contact. Everything’s been easy to figure out.
Antti: Transcending Obscurity has been a good home for us and they have supported us along the way and linked us with Lewandowski, so what more can we ask for.
Are there any musicians or artists you would like to collaborate with? Whether it is for one song, or maybe more.
Seba: It would be so cool to do a Death Metal song with Alice In Chains’s Jerry Cantrell. He’s one of my biggest heroes for many reasons but when it comes to his songwriting, he is God tier.
Antti: Tom G Warrior. Ugh.
Riku: This is super weird but it would be my dream to collaborate with Beyoncé.
What do you know about the French Metal scene? Are there any bands you know and like?
Seba: Been a huge fan of Gojira since I heard From Mars To Sirius and Yyrkoon is also a really cool band, saw them live in Finland with Nile and Psycroptic.
Riku: From Mars to Sirius is very important for me also, but I’m fond of Mütiilation and other Depressive Black Metal from France as well! We had the pleasure of playing with
Viande and The Scalar Process at the Transcending Obscurity Fest last year and both were impressive!
Antti: You can hear older Link, From Mars to Sirius era-Gojira influences on our older EPs but I have been travelling to central European Metal festivals for years so I’ve been exposed to all kinds awesome of French bands like Alcest, Ultra Vomit, Benighted, Gorod, Gojira, Aosoth, Antaeus to name a few, all bands I still listen to regularly.
If you had to organize a concert for Blessing of Despair’s release show, which bands would you love to play with? I let you create a poster with Devenial Verdict and three other bands!
Seba: That’s a tough one! I think that it would be Devenial Verdict, Katatonia, Triptykon and Meshuggah!
Antti: I guess based on what I have said before I have no other option than to say: Meshuggah co-headlines with Triptykon, Ulcerate and Devenial Verdict opens the night. But a more realistic one from our Transcending Obscurity label bands I could see happen one day that would be a totally awesome Death Metal show: Devenial Verdict, Replicant, Dysgnostic, Crypts of Despair! And if the flight from US is too much for Replicant you can always throw in the masters of dissonance and weird and crooked death metal Diskord from Norway. Positive problem these days is that we have a lot of awesome Atmo-Disso-Death to listen to. Go give these bands a chance!
Last and funny question: which dish would you compare Devenial Verdict’s’s music with?
Antti: Hot wings. The spiciness starts to show but will swallow you whole and drag you into the darkness. Painful but yet it’s still so delicious. We have a tradition in the band that we eat spicy wings together after milestones we reach together. We just passed 100k streams for Ash Blind in Spotify and released Blessing of Despair so I guess it’s time again for some wings.
That was the last question for me, so thank you very much for your time and your music, last words are yours!
Antti: Merci beaucoup! Peut-être on va voir en France pour des nuits du Death Metal et Satan dans le future proche! (“Thank you very much! Maybe we’ll come to France for some Death Metal and Satan nights in a close future!” ed.)