Archives of the Dead part XVIII: ADETAR – Death Deified (Demo 1992)

Archives of the Dead part XVIII: ADETAR – Death Deified (Demo 1992)

Line up: Mark Portier (bass), Marco Kleinnibbelink (drums), Oscar Carré (guitars), Martin Visser(guitars), Arno Ket (vocals)

This band is hardly ever mentioned – if ever at all – when speaking of the influential and good Dutch death metal bands… and well, maybe it’s because their achievement is not so big and impressive (with only two demos released). Anyways, bands like Korsakov or Swazafix also had just demos released, but were having quite big impact on the Dutch scene I think, while Adetar seems to have always been very little known, also nowadays… I also haven’t heard of them until very recently, so the truth is that they were simply one of many death metal bands of the golden era and one of those, which simply weren’t lucky enough to take it somewhere further and so they drowned in the sea of death metal bands. But when looking at the line up, it turns out that Adetar had some people, who were also involved in other, more popular Dutch bands: Marco Kleinnibbelink was involved in Deadhead (two full length albums in 1991/93), Oscar Carre in God Dethroned (on “Christhunt” LP) and some other, less known acts. Adetar were one of the underground death metal bands from Enschede (place, where such Pestilence was also located). They were formed back in 1990 and “Death Deified” is their second demo from 1992 (the first one, “The World is Damned” was released in 1991).

Style wise Adetar could have been considered as death / thrash metal band, quite technical I suppose and I could compare them to such bands as Mercyless, Deadhead, Thanatos, Massacra, Gomorhha, Pestilence, Polluted Inheritance, even Revenant and Atheist. And damn, they were really cool, even if not ever riff, idea or arrangement I like from “Death Deified”. But most of that stuff is killer. I like the first song “Crucify The Priest” the most, despite its pretty useless and surely too long, fuckin annoying intro. But later Adetar brings some great riffs of aggressive death / thrash with couple of awesome slower bits, which reminds me even some old Death. There’s this one riff in this song, which I don’t like though and it’s the one, which starts at 3:42 and which is sort of psychedelic / sick / twisted… never been so much into such stuff, really. Other than that, this is awesome song. Also the fourth track, “Apathetic Indecision” has some exceptionally good pieces and is nice heavy death metal and I recommend you it. Not very fast, rather mid paced / slow and maybe this is why I also miss some more ferocity and savagery in bands like Adetar, but what the hell… it would be boring if every band sounded like Sinister or Morbid Angel.

All in all, “Death Deified” is really nice demo. There were quite many similar bands back then, sure, and as such Adetar didn’t offer anything exceptional or groundbreaking, but it’s a good listen and even today this demo sounds impressive. I suppose it’s only a matter of time, when their both demos will also be re-released on CD by one or another label, just like many other little known bands and their old demo tapes had. I have nothing against, even if some will say it’s completely unnecessary. For me this is another old Dutch death metal band worth of interest and I feel quite amazed how big and strong was the scene in this country in the old days and that it offered way more than just their big names.

Final rate: 70/100

Scans of the tape and booklet were taken from the excellent Demo Archives www.demoarchives.com