DESERTED FEAR: “VEINS OF FIRE”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 292025
 

(Below you will find DGR‘s review of the newest album by Deserted Fear, released late last week by Testimony Records.)

Germany’s Deserted Fear have been the engine that could over the course of six albums now. A compact project that has been a three-piece for a large course of their career, the band have been a consistent mark within the world of heavy metal.

Since 2012’s My Empire, Deserted Fear have proven themselves reliable, with releases hitting like clockwork on about the two-to-three-year mark. Their artistic evolution has seen the group change over the years from a very groove-inspired and influence-worshiping branch of death metal – the classic one-two thump of swede-death and Bolt Thrower‘s primal hammering filtered through the modern era’s taste for ruthless efficiency – to something akin to a current-day melodic death metal band since the days of 2019’s Drowned By Humanity.

While the logo or their taste for artwork has remained suitably corpse-obsessed, Deserted Fear have embraced a surgical attack that has made the three-piece sound so much larger than they actually are and one that has also made them fairly easy to understand and get into a groove of your own with.

While the melodeath genre has seen its fair share of revivalism across multiple eras and numerous “influenced by the influenced by the influenced by” crews, Deserted Fear have grown more naturally into a role that could just as easily have been built for late 90’s/early 00’s era In Flames and Soilwork. Deserted Fear‘s newest album Veins Of Fire puts a big spotlight on that fact and also shows that the band have comfortably settled in as being vanguards for doing so. Continue reading »

DESERTED FEAR: “DOOMSDAY”

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Apr 122022
 

(Here’s DGR‘s review of the latest album by the German band Deserted Fear, which is out now via Century Media.)

I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the list of stuff I’ve recently been cycling through for listening, trying to find some sort of overarching theme. Usually you can pin it down to the predictable seasonal shifts at work or the somewhat more nebulous ebbs and flows of heavy metal releases – both of which have been solidly upended over the past few years.

What I did notice, though, was the presence of a few releases early on in the year of the kind that I usually only expect to find one or two of throughout the year. Those are the melodeath releases that seem to revolve around a big, anthemic songwriting core. Those have been a recent development as of the mid-2000s as the genre began to fling itself around more and more in search of ways to stick out amidst an increasingly crowded style – many would argue it has been a stagnated style since the metalcore scene exploded.

While many bands would stick to the tried and true, and wound up with pretty much tried and true results, others would write these big, almost arena-rock-esque ‘us vs the world’ types of songs; many mid-tempo and often about as filled with a million guitar lines and melodies, as one might expect from the big auditorium-filling style. For some reason, it seems like many bands have had this sort of release in them, and at some point they’ll default to it for an album or two, with results that can be as vast as the number of bands doing it.

Which brings us to the deceptively death metal looking March release Doomsday by Germany’s Deserted Fear, which has somehow turned out to be their take on the big pyro-launching, guitar stomp spectacle. Continue reading »

DESERTED FEAR: “DROWNED BY HUMANITY”

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Apr 012019
 

 

(This is DGR‘s review of the new album by the German death metal band Deserted Fear, which was released by Century Media in February.)

Deserted Fear sound absolutely massive on their fourth album, Drowned By Humanity. Having released discs at a fairly steady clip – one every two years for the most part – the Deserted Fear crew have had plenty of opportunities to iterate and expand upon their sound – and also to keep to the black-and-white-skulls motif that makes up a majority of their album artwork.

They have found themselves lying somewhere in the realm of a slightly more melodeath-leaning Kataklysm, with an album (to repeat) written to sound massive. Drowned By Humanity is built around big riffs, big grooves, and big hooks, making its forty-some-odd minutes feel like a hell of a lot longer. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD (VICIOUS HEADBANGERS EDITION): LEGION OF THE DAMNED, MISERY INDEX, DESERTED FEAR

 RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Dec 142018
 

 

Our focus on LISTMANIA at this time of the year tends to diminish the frequency of round-up posts such as this one; even when I’m not doing the writing myself, the behind-the-scenes work that I do to get year-end features ready for publication (such as Andy Synn‘s impressive week-long series of lists, and DGR’s week-long series of catch-up reviews, both of which concluded today) takes some time. My ability to listen to new music and select songs and videos to recommend has been further restricted by the two-week vacation I took, which ended last weekend, and by way too much holiday-season partying this week.

Our 2018 LISTMANIA orgy isn’t nearly finished, by the way. Next week we’ll begin rolling our year-end lists from other NCS writers and guests, and at some point I’ll start revealing my own contribution to LISTMANIA — a list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. But I still do hope to throw in a new-music round-up every now and then.

The three new songs you’ll find below, all of which come with music videos, barely make a dent in my backlog, but I hope to do a bit more catching up with another SEEN AND HEARD post tomorrow and the usual SHADES OF BLACK column on Sunday. Continue reading »

THE BEST OF GERMAN, 2017 (PART 1): DESERTED FEAR / GLARE OF THE SUN / NAILED TO OBSCURITY

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Mar 072017
 

 

(Andy Synn combines reviews of three 2017 albums by German metal bands.)

You know who’ve been absolutely killing it over the last few years? The Germans. Those guys (and gals) definitely know their Metal. From the Thrash to the Prog to the Black to the Death… and every permutation in between… our Germanic brothers and sisters have produced a significant number of my favourite albums over the last couple of years.

And, so far, it looks like 2017 is going to be no different, as the year has already seen a number of high-quality releases from across the metallic spectrum, some of which I’m highlighting here today, and some more of which I’m going to bring you in the next week or so.

So, let us begin, shall we? Continue reading »

DECKARD CAIN’S MALADIES OF THE EAR!

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  4 Responses »
Oct 122014
 

(Our friend and fellow blogger deckard cain re-joins us with a fresh set of musical recommendations.)

Greetings!

While Diablo constantly devises plans, doomed to fail of course, to conquer the world and the rest of the world lets out a collective sigh, I sit here thinking. Thinking about penning down yet another scroll on the most infectious maladies of the ear, and lo, here we are!

“Stay awhile and listen.”

1.  DESERTED FEAR

OSDM with an extremely glossy finish, courtesy of Dan Swanö.

I’ve written about these guys from Germany before; in fact it was on my best of 2012 list here on NCS. What probably separates them from the old guard is their knack for using grooves that are more reminiscent of modern metal. One could say that they’ve got one foot each in the past and the present. This German trio’s got a new LP out titled Kingdom of Worms via FDA Rekotz. Stream their first single below. Continue reading »