Demon Hunter - Collapsing

Do you have a moment to talk about Christian metal?  Yeah?  To someone like myself, well outside of the scene, it sounds like it's somewhat of a contradiction ... right up there with "all you can eat" and "functioning democracy".  After all, isn't Christian music inherently about spreading the Good Word in the most aggressively inoffensive way imaginable? The kind of music that sounds like it was composed by a golden retriever ... relentlessly cheerful, completely harmless, and weirdly excited about everything?

And then there's metal. The genre that essentially built its brand on being Satan's personal playlist. The music your parents were absolutely convinced would summon something from another dimension if you played it backwards. The soundtrack to every moral panic since at least 1983.

Like, how exactly do these two worlds collide? Did someone just... accidentally wander into the wrong rehearsal space one day and decide to really commit to the bit?  It feels like something that shouldn't work, and yet here we are as today we're shining a spotlight on a band who's convinced this old soul that it kind of does.

Our pick for this week comes from Demon Hunter, a band that has somehow managed to make Christian metal sound like a chaotic, guitar-laden rollercoaster ride through a haunted carnival. They’ve been around since the early 2000s, churning out albums with names like "The Triptych" and "Storm the Gates of Hell", which to be honest is metal-as-fuck, and after all nothing says "holy spirit" like apocalyptic imagery and riffs that could shatter stained glass. Their 2010 album "The World Is a Thorn" was sold as their "heaviest but most melodic" effort yet, and whilst it's not going to rearrange your internal organs, but it makes a decent lunge in that direction and is absolutely worth your time.

Now, if you’ve ever felt like the world is actively conspiring to crush you into a fine, existential dust, you’re in luck ... Demon Hunter wrote a song for you, and it's our pick this week.  "Collapsing" manages to gleefully dance on the line between suitably headbangy and toe tappingly catchy.  On top of that it features guest vocals from Björn "Speed" Strid from Soilwork, because as we've said many times before, getting him on a tune with you is how you know you've made it as a metal act.