Just to get us all on the same page here, Demonstealer is the Head Honcho at Demonstealer Records; India’s most notable Metal label. He’s also Vocalist / Guitarist of Demonic Resurrection (I will be reviewing their album Darkness Descends in the near future), and Vocalist / Guitarist/ Drummer of Reptilian Death. He is also an accomplished songwriter whose talents are not exclusively Metal and a varying array of his works can be found at his Soundclick Page. Anyways, Demonstealer has decided to release ...And Chaos Will Reign..., a wide ranging collection of songs that cover a whole multitude of styles; not only each song having a different style but a whole range of styles within each song. Added to that, Demonstealer does all vocals, plays all the instruments and has recorded, mixed and produced the entire album himself. So, it would be fair to say that music is his life! He’s kinda an Indian Ihsahn; he’s gotta headful of stuff that needs to come out and I suspect And Chaos Will Reign is just the first chapter.

Intro song And There Is Calm Before Every Storm couldn’t be better named. A Prog / Power song with sweeping keys and guitars, clean vocals giving no indication of the brutal aggression that is to follow in Whirlwinds Of Devastation; a predominantly Death Metal track with a few Metalcore breakdowns thrown in for good measure. Seething Pain That Leaves No Scars is a dissonant maelstrom of Blackened Power Metal that twists and turns through speed and tempo changes that the old grey matter has trouble keeping up with and keeps going through The Empty Wasteland Of Despair, not letting up or letting you catch your breath until about half way through where you are caught unawares by a pause of sweeping keys, guitar and bass that just messes with your head and is really just the eye of the storm as the calm is soon swept away by more havoc coming the other way. Elegy For The Grieving One is a slow paced, guitar led instrumental which impressively shows off Demonstealer’s guitar playing ability. Penultimate track, A Solitary Mass Of Flesh, takes some figuring out to put a label on it. It has a mantle of Blackened Death Metal, or perhaps Melodic Death; yet there is an underlying Power Metal groove throughout. There is also an ‘Carnival’ theme keyboard line running through the song that, depending on how many horror films involving carnivals you’ve seen, creates a certain eeriness. Album closer In Desolation A Prayer is a slow paced, floaty, Prog track that acts like a cool down period after a strenuous workout, but also leaves you a tad confused. It gets you wondering, after hearing such a gentle sounding song, are you sure you heard so much anger an aggression in the other songs; time to press the replay button! And bugger me, you did hear anger and aggression, amongst other stuff that you missed the first time round. Things like the track title kinda gives away what it’s gonna sound like.

The really good thing about this album is you don’t have to figure out if you’re gonna like this album through reading my review. Demonstealer has very kindly offered And Chaos Will Reign for free download from the Demonstealer Records Forum. You have to jump through a hoop or two, which is painless, to get access to the ‘Members Only’ part of the Forum where you can also download a shitload of other songs from Demonstealer Records’ Artists. If the mention of Indian Metal gives you a WTF moment then this is an ideal opportunity to broaden your Metal horizon and And Chaos Will Reign is a damn fine place to start. As I mentioned earlier I likened Demonstealer to Ihsahn. To me, they both have this urge to create music that is way different from their regular ‘Day-Job’ bands; they have a means of delivery to the general populace and if you don’t really like it then I really don’t think they give a rat’s ass. The mind of a musician is a strange and wonderful organ with unknown boundaries of creation. Take, for example, Karl Sanders’ Sumerian Meditation, who’d have thought that the mind of a member of one of the most extreme Metal bands could have created something like that? I asked him how he came up with Sumerian Meditation and his reply was something like “Hey, I listen to shit like that at home so I thought I’d write some of my own.” If And Chaos Will Reign is just Demonstealer flexing his musical muscle to see what the reaction is gonna be, then I await in eager anticipation for when he goes for a full-on assault.