Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, grind, black, doom, sludge, heavy, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen, we submit to the fiendish noise and abandoned floggings of Portland’s Dagger Lust.
Like some darkly attractive stranger who comes up just before last call, after everyone with “real jobs” has split, Dagger Lust are an enticing experience, indeed. First of all, the trio in question is part of Vrasubatlat, that US-based cabal lately corrupting the underground with their “arcane” releases (read: tapes). So of course Vrasubatlat founder, R (also of Triumvir Foul, Ash Borer, etc.) is involved. Herein playing bass, but not guitar. Nothing so vanilla as a six string guitar was permitted inside the dungeon during this play. Nor is R’s usual skin-welter present. Instead, Tony “T.T.” Thomas–whose guitarwork you may know from the truly concussive Torture Rack–is the (apparently multi-talented) sadist swinging the canes for Dagger Lust. Then bringing it all together into an orgy of endorphin-releasing cacophony is the shadow known as SVN, blogger, poet, and all-around co-conspirator of stuff exactly like this. But never once has he, nor have any of these fellas been involved in something this insane.
Yeah. Leaves a mark, doesn’t it? Sounds like R is running his bass through the Death Star. Meanwhile T.T. is full-arms blasting and SVN is pushing out the tortured tea kettle and awkward-moment record screeching leads ad nauseam. And they’re all three just screaming their crazed heads off.
At first, “Blood Coils in Old Skin,” at least during that opening bass dirge, could pass for an Ash Borer intro. It’s like some black obelisk shining in the red light of distant pain and wavering conscious. Then comes the realization of what that black obelisk actually is, and what it’s to be used for, as the hissing taunts begin in stereo and the drums knock around, always out of reach of your desperately darting eyes. Then it all comes bursting in: the overdriven bass. The bloodsimple drumming. Noise of adrenaline, lube, fear. Dagger Lust got a sick kink for aural torture and we at Demo:listen approve of what it is that they do.
Only a hundred copies of Dagger Lust’s tapes were manufactured. So what’re you waiting for? Or you could always download Dagger Lust for a measly $3. And to think that some people pay hundreds of dollars for this kind of punishment?
You heard it here on Demo:listen. Check this spot next and every Friday for promising new metal.
