Self-Titled (2002) — Demon Hunter

Demon Hunter is the first album by Demon Hunter, the Seattle metal band led by brothers Ryan and Don Clark. Solid State Records, the heavy arm of Tooth & Nail, released it on October 22, 2002. It's ten songs in under forty minutes, and it's a dark, heavy, hook-flecked record that set up one of the biggest Christian metal bands of the next twenty years. It isn't the band's best album. That came two years later with Summer of Darkness. But you can hear where it all started.

Where it came from

The Clark brothers came out of the Christian hardcore band Training for Utopia. For Demon Hunter, the two of them wrote every song and played most of the instruments themselves, with Ryan singing. They brought in Jesse Sprinkle, who'd drummed in Poor Old Lu, to play drums. Aaron Sprinkle produced the record with the band, and it was mixed by J.R. McNeely at The Greenhouse in Vancouver. You can read more on the Demon Hunter band page.

The band played it mysterious at first. The members weren't named in the liner notes. Ryan Clark later explained that they'd all been in other bands and wanted the music to stand on its own. The booklet was split into four chapters. Clark told Harm.us in 2003 that it was "more an artwork based concept as opposed to a concept pertaining to the music," and that the idea was to "give it an old world feel."

Fans had a taste before the album arrived. "Through the Black" turned up on the label sampler This Is Solid State Vol. 3 in February 2002, eight months before the album came out.

What it sounds like

The album opens with "Screams of the Undead" and "I Have Seen Where It Grows," and the formula is set straight away. Big, low guitars, roared verses, and then a sung chorus that breaks through the noise. "Infected" comes third, and it's the song that broke the band. Clark told Harm.us that MTV2 first played its video on the Extreme Rock show, and that the channel's support brought them new fans every day. "Infected" later turned up on the MTV2 Headbangers Ball compilation in 2003. It's the official video to start with.

"Through the Black" is the heaviest thing here. Andy Binks at Cross Rhythms called it "by far the most aggressive song on the album" and said the record "could do with more songs like" it. He also admitted that Demon Hunter "are not an easy band to classify musically," and settled on "heavy nu-metal with a slight hardcore feel at times, and a small hint of thrash here and there."

The two slow songs split people. "My Throat Is an Open Grave" is a dark, moody ballad, and "The Gauntlet" closes the album at nearly seven minutes. Binks felt the songs sung entirely clean "seem to detract from the brutality." Greg Pratt at Exclaim! went the other way. He said "the melodic vocals are the band's strong point, especially on the excellent and epic 'The Gauntlet.'" At Ink 19, the reviewer loved the heavy parts, writing that "the guitars are buzzsaws scraping and grinding," but called "My Throat Is an Open Grave" "one of the corniest metal ballads I've ever heard in my life." We side with Pratt. Both songs give the album room to breathe, and "The Gauntlet" is the best thing on it.

Late in the record the band changes things up a bit. A user reviewer at Sputnikmusic noted that "As We Wept" is "built on an interesting odd time signature riff," and that "A Broken Upper Hand" "could almost qualify as nu metal with Clark's rapping in the verses." That's fair. It's of its time, and you can hear it.

Faith and feeling

Demon Hunter never hid their faith, but they didn't wave it around either. The songs deal with despair, sin and the fight to get out of it, and the hope is in there rather than on the surface. It's a heavy, gloomy listen. The Sputnikmusic reviewer called it "considerably darker than most of their other material," and Isaac Niles, in a reader review for Jesus Freak Hideout, warned that the debut "is fairly dark."

Niles told a story that sums up what this album did for Christian metal. He played it for a friend at a speech contest, and when he told him afterwards that it was a Christian band, "his jaw about fell off of his face." A lot of kids had that same moment in 2002. This was a Christian record that could stand next to anything on rock TV.

What critics said

The Christian press loved it. Niles called it "one of the most amazing records I have ever heard" and said "the entire album is a hardcore gem." Jesus Freak Hideout's Josh Taylor added that it "was one of the best hardcore releases of 2002."

Others were cooler. Pratt at Exclaim! opened with "Now this is how nu metal should be done," but said it wasn't quite at the level of Solid State peers like Norma Jean, Zao and Living Sacrifice. He felt "it occasionally gets repetitive," but added that "there's a power behind these songs and a smart songwriting sensibility that keeps things interesting." Adrian Bromley at Lollipop Magazine called Demon Hunter "an explosive band that could bowl over an 18-wheeler" and the album "a hearty debut of aggression to crank up and mosh to."

The sharpest complaint came from that Sputnikmusic reviewer. Most of the songs, they said, run the same pattern of programmed intro, heavy riff, screamed verse and sung chorus. But they still gave the band credit, writing that the album "laid the foundations for powerful things that had still to come."

The verdict

Demon Hunter is a debut, and it sounds like one. It's short, a few songs blur together, and the sound is very 2002. But "Infected" still hits hard, "Through the Black" is a beast, and "The Gauntlet" shows a band that already knew how to write a big, sad, beautiful song. Without this record there's no Summer of Darkness and no The Triptych. It's worth going back to.

7/10

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