Black Dethe (USA) - "Mary's Blood" demo, 1988

Vocal performance can be a make or break part of a band. A bad job behind the mic can turn a great band performance into a tedious listen, and conversely, an energized and inspired vocal performance can bring a lot of excitement to an otherwise dull recording. One of the cases where this holds especially true are the California band Black Dethe.

Formed in 1985 during the beginning of the death metal explosion, its easy to see why Black Dethe got immediately lost in the shuffle. Not only was their name rather similar to an already established act Black Death (who to this day still have a substantially larger cult following), but their first demo, 1985's "Evil Prayer", was very typical of the time. The sound is very tinny, the performance is sloppy, the songwriting is unfocused and the vocals are rather standard death metal vocals with a fair amount of distortion on them. Not to say that the demo is bad by any means, but it doesn't exactly do much to distinguish itself from its peers.

Three years made all the difference in the band's sound. By their second and final demo, the band had honed in on their sound, found a slightly better recording techniques, and switched vocalists. "Mary's Blood" shows the band playing the same kind of simplistic death/thrash found on "Evil Prayer", but the vocal change makes this one an instant hit. The new vocalist, Chris Turner, sounds totally manic and possessed throughout the entire recording. Starting off with an intrusive backwards fade-in to the vocals (one of my favorite production techniques in heavy metal), Turner's vocals come in the form of rapid paced blood curdling screams that sound like they are being unleashed from the bowels of hell. This guy has a truly powerful voice that I'm sure left his throat sore for days after the recording session; they are the same kind of brutal howl that Martin Van Drunen uses, except about an octave higher in pitch.

Musically the band is no slouch either. As previously noted, the band plays a sort of simplistic yet energetic form of death metal. The band isn't going to pull any punches that the listener won't expect on here, but the sound quality is pretty good, allowing for plenty of room for all the instruments to breathe; the bass is actually prominent in the mix, which isn't something you hear too often in death metal demos, as typically when you get a bass sound it tends to drown out the rest of the music. Solos come short and furious and the drumming is very loose and at times very hardcore influenced, playing more into the energetic nature of these tunes.

As far as I know, the band didn't record anything past this demo beyond one rehearsal track entitled "Iron Cross" which is in the same vein as this demo. A shame, really, as these guys had definitely hit their mark with this recording and showed a great deal of promise. Unfortunately this stuff has not been reissued on any format that I'm aware of, which is also a shame. Make sure to track this one down, crank at full volume and be prepared for a mighty declaration of "Mary's Blood".