| Demon Hunter | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | October 22, 2002 | |||
| Recorded | June – August 2002 | |||
| Studio | The Black Dungeon | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 38:39 | |||
| Label | Solid State | |||
| Producer | Aaron Sprinkle, Demon Hunter | |||
| Demon Hunter chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Singles from Demon Hunter | ||||
| ||||
Demon Hunter is the debut studio album by American Christian metal band Demon Hunter. It was released on Solid State Records on October 22, 2002.
The album was recorded in Drop C tuning. All of Demon Hunter's subsequent releases would be dropped even lower to Drop B. Industrial vocal elements are also featured in various songs.
Demon Hunter joined Extol on tour in the summer of 2003. [5]
Demon Hunter's material first appeared on This Is Solid State Vol. 3 in February 2002, which included a demo recording of the band's song "Through the Black". [6] "Through the Black" was later re-recorded for Demon Hunter's self-titled album. The band's first single, "Infected," had a music video which debuted on MTV2's Extreme Rock and found considerable airplay on Fuse TV's Uranium . The intense video revolves around two subjects; one, vocalist Ryan Clark, is shown using an extravagant dagger to carve the word "HELP" into a tree in the pouring rain. The second subject is a white collared man at a desk who, for ambiguous reasons, is overcome with extreme panic. The man finally falls to the floor after typing "help" repeatedly on his keyboard, with the word being shown on a monitor. "Infected" would be featured on the compilation album MTV2 Headbangers Ball in 2003. Demon Hunter was later included on Death, a Destination1, the band's second compilation album, in 2011. [7]
The band members are not credited in the album's liner notes. Clark explained this by citing the fact that Demon Hunter's members have been in previous groups and that they wanted the band to initially rely solely on its music. The Demon Hunter booklet has four chapters: "Letters from the Seventh War", "The Red Wasp/The Everlasting Death", "Love and Grace for Fallen Souls", and "The Awakening". [8] The first three chapters comprise three tracks each, with the last one consisting only of the last track on the album. When asked about this, Clark responded:
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |   [3] |
| Cross Rhythms | [1] |
| Jesus Freak Hideout |  [10] |
Demon Hunter was generally well received. Allmusic's Alex Henderson rated the album three out of five stars. He described it as "an album in which moments of intense brutality are followed by hauntingly melodic passages." [3] He commended the band for its "complementary" use of intensity and melody". [3] CMJ called the album "Christian death metal at its finest", noting that the album is overstuffed with styles, "but that's just the way metalcore kids like it." [11] Exclaim!'s Greg Pratt called the album "metalcore at its finest." [2] Though he found the album not up to the standard of the band's peers on Solid State, particularly Zao, Norma Jean, and Living Sacrifice, and said that the music was repetitive in places, he wrote that the songwriting keeps things interesting and that " for the teen angst-types looking for something more genuine than whatever the mainstream is pumping out, Demon Hunter will be a good stepping stone to get kids into more underground tunes." [2]
All tracks are written by Demon Hunter.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Screams of the Undead" | 4:34 |
| 2. | "I Have Seen Where It Grows" | 3:14 |
| 3. | "Infected [a] " | 3:08 |
| 4. | "My Throat Is an Open Grave [b] " | 3:54 |
| 5. | "Through the Black" | 4:27 |
| 6. | "Turn Your Back and Run" | 3:46 |
| 7. | "And the Sky Went Red" | 0:29 |
| 8. | "As We Wept" | 3:42 |
| 9. | "A Broken Upper Hand" | 4:28 |
| 10. | "The Gauntlet" | 6:53 |
| Total length: | 38:39 | |
Band members
Production
1.Death, a Destination also includes the studio albums Summer of Darkness (2004) and The Triptych (2005).
