Ahret Dev - Hellish

AHRET DEV - Hellish (DYWIZJA KOT - CD 2001)

This is another, after Symbolic Immortality, CD release from Dywizja Kot. And this time we have Ahret Dev, who were Polish death metal band active between 1994-98, so quite shortly. During this time they’ve put out “Hellish” album in 1997, as well as couple of demos. And all those recordings have been included on Dywizja Kot CD. It gives a huge dose of death metal, as totally there’s 70 minutes of music and the full length album is just about 30 minutes long, so the rest are demo tracks. Not bad amount for one take, but definitely a good lesson in another quite forgotten and underrated Polish death metal.

And in case you never heard of them before and don’t know their story, you can read quite a lot about it in the booklet from Dywizja Kot CD. It’s filled with band photos, lyrics, liner notes – which, not accidentally - were titled “Unfulfilled ambitions”. Good stuff then and everything you need to know about Ahret Dev.

As I mentioned, there’s over 70 minutes of music and that’s a lot to go through on one go, maybe even too much, as after like 40 minutes you start to lose concentration on what’s playing, which song it is, etc, they start to sound the same. So, what I usually do is one time I play only “Hellish” album repeatedly and another time I only play the demos; this is better in my opinion. Anyways, it doesn’t change the fact that Ahret Dev was damn awesome death metal band. Their style is quite easy to describe, as the influences are more than obvious; personally I feel like they’ve been very close to the 90’s death metal era Hate, like “Lord is Avenger” album for example (music was close, but also the vocals style was similar to Adam’s). Add to it also Deicide, Vader, Damnation, Vital Remains or whoever else you want from this sort of blasphemous death metal genre, it doesn’t matter. But what matters is that “Hellish” was just damn good album, I really enjoy listening to it also today, almost 20 years since it was recorded. It’s just solid, neck breaking stuff, filled with vicious, sick riffs. It’s short, but concrete death metal, no bullshit, no faggot fancy guitar masturbation or whatever, but just straight forward, classic dark death metal. It’s rather fast, brutal, relentless, demonic, but still quite easy to listen to. I am sure that every death metal freak will easily catch his favourite riffs, songs, some killer arrangements, because the album is full of them. “Izis Ode”, “The Damned”, “Archnemezis”, “Seventh Gate” are bunch of mu favourites, but all songs are very even and there are no fillers in such short album.

Then we have the demo material. “Demo 1995” is actually almost as long as the “Hellish” album haha, but it’s interesting that none of the songs from it have actually been re-recorded for the first full length. That surely makes “Demo 1995” worth to have, even if musically it’s not quite as great as “Hellish”. It’s just decent and solid demo recording, nothing groundbreaking or utterly memorable, but a good listen and nice collectable piece of death metal. I remember that back in those old days, after the release of this demo, Ahret Dev was often called “Polish Deicide”, in almost every review or interview… and well, I guess I can agree with it, as there’re many similarities between both bands (and Hate haha), so surely Ahret Dev must have been taking many influences from the Hoffmann / Benton team. Like for example “Homicide” song, which has these very alike sick, brutal, fast parts and Benton – like vocals. But obviously they had much harsher and not so powerful production when compared to Deicide. And you know, I don’t really care for originality; much more I need to hear some great death metal and this demo is not bad. “Homicide” or “Hydra” are awesome songs, maybe if the sound was better, then they would make even bigger impression, who knows, but what the hell... This demo doesn’t sound so bad, speaking of the recording quality, so I am not bothered. Great addition to the album!

Finally the CD contains rehearsal bonus recordings from 1994. There are four tracks that later were also recorded on “Demo 1995” and one unreleased (“War”). The production is even harsher than on the demo, but it’s again not terrible and again it’s just good listen and good addition. I don’t know what else can I write. I mean Ahret Dev were just very solid death metal band from the mid 90’s and maybe their music wasn’t exceptional, but it was good enough to enjoy it. So, I am happy to have this CD from Dywizja Kot and surely recommend it to all collectors, although it may not be so easy to grab a copy of it, to be honest (although I did find two more deadly cheap copies quite recently, which I bought for my friends!!). But you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if these recordings got re-released again. We shall see. Check it out anyway.

Final rate: 75/100