Most bands who start making music record a demo and hope, with a bit of luck, records labels are interested enough to sign them. If that doesn’t work they record another demo and hope this time it will be good enough to get them the deal. If that also doesn’t work, etc. etc. “The Seventh Gate” decided to do it their own way and after releasing two demos they raised their own Satan Rock label, which is also the description they gave to their sound. Packed with a beautiful cover painting by John Zig, the first release on Satan Rock is “None So bloody as the Kingdom of Christ”. With this sort of releases you expect a professional sounding band as well, so I was kind of disappointed when I first heard the record. The sound isn’t really all that bad; it’s just a typical demo sound which you don’t expect.

But if you look at it for what it really is, an upgraded demo, you’ll find a reasonably talented band that needs to grow but has potential. They play a somewhat original combination of grind, death and black metal, with the main focus on the death part. From the website I understand they replaced their drummer after the recordings, which is a good thing because the drummer sometimes can’t keep up with the tempo and the result is a sloppy mess. The band has some good ideas but there are not enough of them to keep the attention to it all the time. All in all “The Seventh Gate” is a promise for the future if they mature a bit, but for now you can better spend your hard earned Euros on something else.