Daevar – Delirious Rites
Release Date: 27th January 2023
Label: The Lasting Dose Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Heavy Stoner, Doom Metal.
FFO: Windhand, Monolord, Black Sabbath, Sleep, Paradise Lost.
Review By: Jason James
The 27th of January marks the day Daevar drops their debut album, Delirious Rites. The German 3-piece, hailing from Cologne, aim to make their mark with this release.
I’ve always been fascinated with the way Stoner metal has this strange fuzzy sheen to it. It almost as if you are listening to the band from the next room, but the walls are paper thin, so you hear exactly what is happening, but that crispness isn’t there. It’s as if you’ve been standing in front of a bank of speakers at a loud concert all night, and when you get outside, your companion sounds a little muffled.
Delirious Rites is a satisfying listen. Pardis Latifi – Bass Guitar & Vocals, Moritz Ermen Bausch – Drums and Caspar Orfgen – Guitars, have found a way to make an impression in a stacked subgenre. Daevar keep it simple while being creative. Their drawling, woolly sound is cut through by Pardis’ clean vocals. Her tone is reverential, almost pleading in places, as if the act of performing is some sort of entreaty to a higher power, the grumbling of her bass part of a bid to add extra substance to her petition.
As much as I enjoyed listening to this album, in a small way, I’m glad it was only 30 minutes long. If there had been 10 or 11 songs on here, there would have been a danger of the music getting monotonous. Four of the songs possess similar tempos, contain melodies with similar pitch, and have similar drum patterns. This is not a problem on this release, but going forward, I feel Daevar will have to find some way to keep this level of intensity while simultaneously broadening their musical output. No easy feat.
The only exception to this is track 4, Leviathan, an even slower, gloomier track. Here, Pardis is joined on vocal duty by Grin and Earth Ship alumni Jan Oberg. Almost twice as long as any other song on the album, Daevar really hit their stride on this one. The bass strums out a simple 4-note riff, which is then joined by Moritz’s able accompaniment on the drums. Caspar’s guitar joins the bass, and as the vocals kick in, the guitar begins to add texture to the track.
This is an impressive debut from this trio, and it will be interesting to see what else is in store for us in the future.
(4 / 5)
