Ancient Crypts

Ancient Crypts - Devoured by Serpents
Iron Bonehead Productions, 2013
Genre: Death Metal

1. Introduction
2. Deep into the Ancient Crypts
3. Between the Mortuary Remains
4. Devoured by Serpents
5. Procession to Nyarlathotep











I've learned my lesson when it comes to the Chilean metal scene, which seems to be thriving and producing a lot of high quality material.  Here we have Ancient Crypts, which plays a brand of old school styled Death Metal.  For their second demo "Devoured by Serpents" Iron Bonehead pressed a pro-printed booklet and tape.  It looks very well done and fits the aesthetic of this ancient brand of Death Metal very well.  The tape is limited to 300 copies.

Now I haven't heard the first rehearsal demo, and I don't even know where to begin tracking it down despite all my abilities to track down old recordings.  That being said, this is my first experience with this project and "Devoured by Serpents" really brings me back to my early days exploring the extreme metal scene in general.  Their music really stands on that precipice where Death Metal was forming out of the Thrash Metal scene.  You can really hear the Thrashier elements blended into some of the more crushing Death Metal in each track.  I feel like this is the type of aesthetic Possessed was going after, but it had never occurred to anyone in 1985 to do this, albeit Possessed certainly had a lot more flaire to their song writing.  Definitely a well done demo and I would be interested to see where the band goes from here.

The material is well recorded, but it is not recorded in any kind of pristine fashion, which is perfect.  This material maintains that old world grit like the early 90's.  I wonder if a lot of this revival of the old styles has a lot to do with Repugnant's album "Epitome of Darkness", which is around the time bands realized they could really nail that old sound and blend it with the newer elements of metal perfectly.  I feel like before then you either played an older style of Metal or more modern forms, but with the release of Repugnant, a blend started showing up a lot more.  Now we have great bands like Ancient Crypts and Deathcult recording demos.  Is Deathcult the better project? Yeah, I think so, but that doesn't change the fact that I did enjoy Ancient Crypts quite a bit and they have a slightly different approach to the material.  So, if you like that kind of material, "Devoured by Serpents" may be worth checking out!