Band:	Demon Hunter
Album:	Storm The Gates Of Hell
Style:	Metalcore
Release date:	November 2007

01. Storm The Gates Of Hell
02. Lead Us Home
03. Sixteen
04. Fading Away
05. Carry Me Down
06. A Thread Of Light
07. I Am You
08. Incision
09. Thorns
10. Follow The Wolves
11. Fiction Kingdom
12. The Wrath Of God
13. No Reason To Exist [bonus]
14. Grand Finale [bonus]

So yeah, Demon Hunter is a Christian metalcore band. Blah blah, whoopteedo, etc. This misguided choice of allegiance doesn't prevent them from seriously rocking on this release (for the most part anyway). Storm The Gates Of Hell is an immense improvement over the band's previous album and generally a powerful set of songs offering the unlikely proof that metalcore can be interesting and inspired.

Immediately after popping this disc into the player it become apparent that Demon Hunter has dropped the dominant expected sound that metalcore bands cater to these days. Instead of the clinical approach that fans of Killswitch Engage, Chimaira or Trivium will be familiar with, the Seattle natives opt for a raw, hardcore influenced sound that excels in immediacy and harshness. The casual listener would be forgiven for confusing the title track with Pro-Pain, for example. The other extreme songs on this album ("Lead Us Home", "I Am You") provoke similar comparisons, with influences from crossover thrash being very audible. The rawer approach also makes the obligatory post-grunge passages on Storm The Gates Of Hell more tolerable. In fact, I would say that unlike the emo-driven alt-metal that a lot of metalcore bands commit to tape, Demon Hunter actually nails the proper post-grunge sound fairly well ("Carry Me Down", many others), making the experience a lot more pleasant (who am I kidding? The way it's usually done is totally unlistenable!) for people who can't stand the current direction prevalent in mainstream contemporary metal.

Now let me bitch a little bit. This is still metalcore, with all of its shortcomings. It is almost redundant now to mention that the songwriting is somewhat formulaic and that the soft-hard dynamic essentially makes it hard for either end of the spectrum to be particularly impressive. So yes, if you don't dig this style in the first place, Demon Hunter will not change your mind in the least. On the other hand, you cant exactly hold it against a band for not being Slayer, can you?

All in all, Demon Hunter's Storm The Gates Of Hell is that rare and surprising example of quite decent metalcore. Not recommended for people who puke at the mention of this style but otherwise not a bad record.