The Triptych — Demon Hunter

Demon Hunter's third album, The Triptych, came out on Solid State Records on October 25, 2005. The Seattle band recorded it in July 2005 at Compound Recording with Aaron Sprinkle producing, the same room and producer behind Summer of Darkness the year before. Machine mixed it and Adam Ayan mastered it. Ryan Clark sang, Don Clark played rhythm guitar and Jon Dunn played bass. Two new members came in: Ethan Luck, formerly of the Supertones, on lead guitar, and Timothy "Yogi" Watts on drums. Sprinkle added keyboards and programming, and Lars Katz played extra guitar. It's twelve tracks and about fifty-one minutes (51:02), and Dan Seagrave painted three different covers to match the title. It scores an 8/10.

What you're hearing

A short intro, The Flame That Guides Us Home, opens with a woman's voice and drops straight into Not I. Then comes Undying, the first single, and the album settles into its pattern of hard groove riffs in the verses and big clean choruses from Clark. Jesus Freak Hideout's Paul Portell gave it 4.5 out of 5. He called it three times the production quality, three times the brutality and three times the heartfelt growls, and said many of the songs feel like a wrecking ball flattening small buildings in a shower of broken glass. He pointed to Relentless Intolerance, Not I and the Prong cover Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck for gut-wrenching guitars and pulsating beats. His real highlights were the slower ones: One Thousand Apologies, with Clark's melodic singing up front, and the piano-led closer The Tide Began to Rise. He called Deteriorate a creepy yet smooth ballad about personal pain, and he thought fans of the band's older material would find a favorite in Fire to My Soul.

Cross Rhythms' Greg Sammons scored it 8 out of 10 and said the band was "the closest thing we'll ever get to a 'Christian Slipknot'". He heard a more classic metal approach than before, a little less nu-metal and more pull from the growing metalcore scene. He also warned that the extra melody might disappoint listeners who only want raw brutality. He named Undying and Fire to My Soul as songs that keep a rasping edge and still carry real spiritual and lyrical weight, and he singled out the run from the intro into Not I.

AllMusic's Eduardo Rivadavia gave it 4.5 out of 5, and Kaj Roth at Melodic.net gave it 4 out of 5. Roth hadn't been won over by Summer of Darkness, but he called this one a nu-metal monster of a record. He said the vocals were better balanced, the songs were better written and the band had grown from medium size to X-large.

Not everyone agreed. Greg Pratt at Exclaim! admitted it was a solid record, but he said the sound had been done so often by other bands that it had become generic and hard to sit through. He called the post-Pantera groove riffs old news. Even so, he liked the Prong cover and, to his own surprise, the ballads.

How it was made

Clark said in a 2009 interview with Slumper that he sang this album into a basic handheld microphone instead of the standing, screened mic he had used on the first two records. That let him move around and hold longer notes. The catch was that he naturally cupped the mic, which could muffle his voice or make it sound further away. Sprinkle also produced Emery's The Question that same year. Machine, known for his work with Lamb of God, handled the mix.

In February 2006 the band's website thanked members of the armed forces for their support, said The Soldier's Song was for them and mentioned the letters and photos still coming in. The album sold about 6,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures reported by Blabbermouth, and entered the Billboard 200 at No. 136. It reached No. 10 on Billboard's Top Christian Albums chart and No. 1 on the Heatseekers chart.

Christopher Sims directed the Undying video, and Darren Doane directed One Thousand Apologies. Not I was the last single, with no video. On October 31, 2006 Solid State reissued the album with acoustic versions of My Throat Is an Open Grave, My Heartstrings Come Undone and The Tide Began to Rise, a remix of Undying, and a DVD with a live show from the Glasshouse in Pomona, California. The band re-recorded Deteriorate and The Tide Began to Rise for Songs of Death and Resurrection in 2021, and Not I turned up on the Killing Floor 2 game soundtrack in 2015.

Where the score lands

It gets an eight because the songs are better and the range is wider than on Summer of Darkness, and most of the critics heard the same thing. Undying, Not I and One Thousand Apologies still sound like three of the band's best singles, and The Tide Began to Rise is a real closer, not a token slow song. Why not a nine? Portell's point holds that parts of it recycle the last album, and Pratt was right that the groove-metal formula was crowded by late 2005. Why not a seven? The clean singing, the piano, Machine's mix and the sheer number of strong choruses lift it above a standard metalcore record from that year.

Watch

Undying leads. Behind it are the One Thousand Apologies video, Not I and The Soldier's Song from the same album.

Where this album sits on Loud Faith

The Triptych is the record where Demon Hunter moved the clean choruses to the front without dropping the groove. It belongs on the same metal shelf as Living Sacrifice's Reborn, the band Exclaim! credited with making headbanging safe for churchgoers. Start with Undying, then let The Tide Began to Rise close it out.