Label - Black Lion
Release Date - 31st March 2023
Words- Tony Bliss
Pretty much single-handedly starting a heavy music revolution in his native India, Sahil Makhija (also known as The Demonstealer) is thoroughly deserving of his status as a genuine heavy metal icon, and widely hailed as one of our world's hardest working and most important musicians. Not content with being one half of blackened death metal unit Demonic Resurrection, the head-honcho of Demonstealer Records and the creator of Resurrection Fest, this self-monikered side-project is also ridiculously prolific, and The Propaganda Machine kills with a certain air of inevitability behind it - with members of Aborted, Triptykon, Ne Obliviscaris and more lending their impeccable talents, what self-respecting metal fan could not want to hear this record?
And so, with a serious amount of metallic pedigree suggesting ingenuity and brutality in equal measure, the end result crackles with a tech-death energy and swords aloft, symphonic pomp that is tricky to pin down, but no less glorious for it.
Indeed, opening cuts ‘The Fear Campaign’ and ‘Monolith Of Hate’ are both elite-tier, shit-kicking, fire-breathing extreme metal rippers, their blast-fulled attack often enhanced by a volley of cleanly sung hooks and pencilling in a rough blueprint of what is to come. ‘The Art Of Disinformation’ thrashes ‘n’ stomps like later day Deicide before unfurling the most explosive chorus of the lot, ‘Screams Of Those Dying’ tips its hangman's cap to Slaughter Of The Soul era At The Gates with a bristling undercurrent of melo-death sheen, and closer ‘Crushing The Iron Fist’ might be a career-high point for Demonstealer, with the sort of melodic vocal breaks that might have the likes of Soilwork looking over their shoulder, and numerous scintillating guitar solos all propelled forward by one of the most relentless drumming performances of the year.
The Propaganda Machine may never be afraid to bring its orchestral and progressive tendencies to the fore, but the emphasis rarely strays from Demonstealer's ultra-precise, lightly virtuosic take on thunderous modern metal. And when it’s done this well, why the hell should it?
8/10
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