Germany’s reigning blackened metal masters Thulcandra have a new album set for release December 6 via Napalm Records titled Live Demise. The disc was recorded back in 2011 in Munich, Germany with the original line-up consisting of Sebastian Ludwig, Tobias Ludwig, Matthias Landes (Dark Fortress, Noneuclid), and Steffen Kummerer (Obscura, Death, Cynic). Fans of Thulcandra take notice; many of these tracks haven’t been performed in more than a decade.
In full transparency, this critic has been a fan of Thulcandra for the last decade, so instead of writing a puff piece celebrating all that’s grand about them, the expectation is that Live Demise will be a shredder of the highest order. The question is, was the expectation met?
Live Demise is an amazing record and a great document of Thulcandra working their craft on stage. Now granted, this recording is 13 years old, but it’s a bastard ripper! The band are tight, and the production is fantastic. Live albums are traditionally a hard sell with a lot of fans in this day and age of YouTube and streaming, but Live Demise is eight tracks of bludgeoning, skull-splitting metal which sound incredible here. What really impressed me is that Thulcandra sound better live than in the studio, which is tough to do. Track five, “In Blood And Fire,” is the best example of this with its different time signatures and varied atmospheric elements contained within it which Thulcandra pull off in exemplary fashion.
There isn’t a whole lot of onstage banter between band and audience on this album, which I would’ve like to have heard, but getting to hear “Aeon Of Darkness” and “Night Eternal” bashed out at breakneck speed is a good compromise for me. Live recordings are touch-and-go sometimes when it comes to capturing how epic or how heavy a band is outside the studio but Live Demise is a great showcase for the aforementioned. The aggression and brutality quotient are not only met but exceeded with all eight tracks. “Black Flags Of Hate,” for example, is a writhing, churning, cauldron of heavy metal destruction. Cheers to Thulcandra for making the best live record of the last few years. Stream it, buy it, patch it on!
