Fucking re-releases. Why do they exist? Because they are cheap to put out, since recording has already been done. This here re-release is one of Finnish death metal band Demigod and consists of their debut album and their first ever demo. In 1993 apparently this shit was hot. On the band’s site it says they are currently labelless, but are in the process of recording new material. Xtreem Music saw fit to release ‘Slumber Of Sullen Eyes’ again to get us all to warm up for the new release. So now, the question of most importance: am I warming up? And subsequently: should WE be warming up for Demigod’s future?

First thing reading the band bio that springs to attention is the fact that Demigod only ever made two studio albums, this one fourteen years ago and ‘Shadow Mechanics’ in 2002, which is probably about craftsmen never getting the props they deserve for making factory machines work or something. About a year after releasing Slumber Of Etc., Etc. the band separated, got back together five years later, made promo tapes and whatever other stuff that gets a band a decent record deal once out ten thousand times and in 2001 signed with Spikefarm Records. Indeed they were not the one out of ten thousand to begin with, but they also got dropped from Spikesomething Records last year for reasons we will never know or care enough to be interested in. But, let my negative talk not put you off, the music on this ‘Slumber Of Sullen Eyes’ (SOSE) re-issue is pretty decent, mostly mid-tempo death metal.
No, your head will not fall off of in sheer surprise or admiration all of a sudden, but it’s allright.

The SOSE-part starts off with a useless keyboard intro with lots of synths that don’t at all fit the actual beginning of the album. ‘As I Behold I Despise’, is a nice title, but the song that it contains is pretty standard death metal fare: the grunting is decent enough, the guitars are decent enough, the drums are decent enough, but nothing really sticks and the hacked drum parts are played out (by 2006). At half of the song they slow it down and throw in some nice synth effects in the background and the guitarplayer awakes out of his ‘going through the motions-mindset’. This is how it is throughout the album: everything sounds average, here and there are some truly good riffs, or some inspired song structures, but in the end everything slowly flows back to decent and average and in that: middle of the pack obscurity. It’s like when you hear Slayer now, you’re thinking ‘well, I can almost imagine this must have been nice way back when’.
Then there’s ‘Unholy Domain’, the last lot of songs on this too long record, comprised of Demigod’s debut demo. It is exactly the same, with the following differences: awful production, yet more hack-parts and less inspiration. Therefore, it should really have been left off this re-issue production. Maybe the biggest die hards will know what to do with this, but me, if I could pick up some scissors and cut off the part of the CD this demo is on, that`d be wonderful.

So, to answer the two-part question posed in the intro: no and why bother (:there`s hundreds of better who do put an album every once in a while).