Demon Hunter Outlive: An Album A Day

An Album A Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday

Before we get started with talking about the album, a little background. Demon Hunter are one of the only staples of the Christian Metal scene, think of them as Skillet’s bigger and burlier little brother. Over the years Demon Hunter have garnered respect within both the Christian and regular metal scenes for making quality music and not trying to hide their Christianity behind metaphors and bland lyrics.

    The two main elements of Demon Hunter’s sound for most of their careers has been face melting metal sections offset by extremely catchy and melodic interludes. After their last album Extremist had a few too many of those melodic sections, Demon Hunter have returned with a much more balanced approach on their 2017 release Outlive (stylized as Ovtlive)

    The album opens up in typical Demon Hunter fashion with a build up in the form of Trying Times. The opening track has lead singer Ryan Clark’s multi tracked vocals echoing over huge drums and guitars in a nice mix of heavy and serene. Trying Times goes straight into one of the heaviest tracks on the album Jesus Wept, a track that sounds like Slipknot mixed with some death metal elements. The lyrics here are based upon John 11:35 which is part of the story of Lazarus and states rather plainly “Jesus Wept”.

    One of my favorite things on this album is that Demon Hunter has decided to add synths straight out of Stranger Things and heavy guitars to their softer songs, giving the entire album a very rich and dynamic sound. Songs like Died In My Sleep and Raining Down have entirely clean vocals, but also feature Djent inspired guitar riffing, fast paced drums and polished old school synths.

    Not only is the production and musicianship on this album superb, but it feels like an actual record and not simply a collection of songs. Each song either fades into the next directly (such as Trying Times into Jesus Wept) or by switching tone at the end of one song to fit the beginning of the next (such as The End into One Less).

    The album closes out with Slight The Odds, a track which has a nearly one minute fade from only a string section into the full band in a very smooth transition that sees the strings stick around for the entirety of the song. The blending of symphonic and metal elements works well under Clark’s vocals before the entire track fades out to just the strings again.

    Overall Outlive is an excellent album that features some of the best production on a metal album I’ve heard in awhile. Each instrument is clearly audible and there's never a point where the heaviness of the guitars makes the note clarity suffer. Furthermore, the use of synths, strings and piano parts make the album feel huge and dynamic, with all of the loud and soft parts mixing together into a cohesive whole.

    While it’s certainly not the heaviest album in Demon Hunter’s catalogue, Outlive is one of the best, blending a myriad of different pieces into one complex, complete and mature album.

Album On DemonHunter.com (CD) (Vinyl)
Album On Google Play
Album On Itunes