Arising like some kind of monstrous, Fulci-esque zombie from the sewers earlier this year, ZOM have been a revelation locally. Having only played their debut show earlier this year after being locked in the rehearsal room honing their craft, they made an instant impression with their archaic brand of death metal, inspired by the likes of Necrovore, Beherit, Obscurity and demo-era Death. Sure,revisionism is rife in death metal in 2011 as everyone and their mother stocks up on Boss Heavy Metal pedals and attempts to re-write “the Left Hand Path” or “Onward to Golgotha”, but ZOM’s sound doesn’t feel contrived like many of their peers. It’s an organic approach that places emphasis on creating a dark and primitive atmosphere rather than simply realigning stolen riffs from their favourite albums.

The buzz around ZOM already in their brief existence was such that any kind of recording was always going to be hotly anticipated – but when it was announced that their demo would be released not by the band themselves, but by the mighty Invictus Productions label (Diocletian, Negative Plane, Portal, Antediluvian, etc..) it became obvious that this band wouldn’t just be Dublin’s best kept secret for long. No one could have expected what would happen next however: having released their eponymous demo via Invictus on Thursday December 29th,the demand was such that in less than 48 hours (I’m writing this on Dec 31st) the initial pressing of the demo has essentially sold out – there are less than 20 copies left as I write this, and by the time this post is up it’s likely those will be gone too.

Lucky for you all then that we’ve managed to secure a stream of ZOM’s demo in its’ entirety here for you at CVLT Nation! Ever keen to get the word out about vital new sounds, we knew this band would be one you’d need to hear for yourselves.Our thanks go to the band and the label for giving us the green light..

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Track listing:
1. The Horror From Beyond
2. Cult Of The Black Flame
3. The Chaos Dimension
4. Infernal Lord Of Deepest Black
5. Cosmic Winds

It’s a rare and magic(k)al thing when a band appear seemingly from the ether with a fully formed sound.

Emerging seemingly from nowhere earlier this year with a stunner of a demo, the UK’s UNHOLY MAJESTY are one of that tiny few percentage of bands who have almost straight away become a force to be reckoned with based solely on the strength of their music rather than any major hype.

Having released a debut demo on the UK’s Hemlock 13 label which sold out almost immediately earlier this year, the band have quickly come to the attention of the global scene. While their sudden appearance may have seemed like a spontaneous sneak attack, the band went through a longer incubation period than you might expect..”The songs on the demo were written at the end of 2010 but real life and other bands got in the way so we could only record on select evenings, weeks or sometimes months apart” begins the band’s spokesman Daniel Duggan ”We only just finished recording the vocals and adding samples this July, days before the recording needed to be sent to the plant to print the  tapes.  We made a conscious decision not to announce the band name or create a website before the music was finished and ready for people to listen to, we wanted the music to speak for itself.”

In spite of featuring current and ex-members of various UK hardcore bands, it is this very insistence that Unholy Majesty’s music stand apart from the members’ other work that helped form the band’s sound: “The whole idea behind the band was to write music free from the constraints of any other bands we are in at the same time, there would be no preconceptions as to how we should sound other than us taking a liberal influence from Systems Overload, Birth IsPain and the first 100 Demons record.  It was just a way to flex our musical muscles on our own terms purely for our own enjoyment.”

All the more impressive then that these songs, written primarily for their own enjoyment, found their way to no less than A389 records who will reissue the tape as a 7″ in the not so distant future: “Well after Nathan asked to put out the demo tape on Hemlock 13, unbeknown to us he had sent the tracks over to Dom Romeo to check out, herelly liked them and asked if we would be interested in releasing it as a 7″ on A389.  We’ll definitely be working more with A389 in the future”.

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Read the rest of this review after the jump!
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