Track By Tracks: DEVASTATOR - Baptised In Blasphemy (2020)

1. Howling Night:

First of all, some grave keeping:All of the songs start off as a rough demo, a skeleton of what they will eventually become. Each member brings in the demo and we jam it out in the rehearsal rooms until we are one hundred percent satisfied with them. For ‘Howling…’, the music was written in around 10 minutes at home and the final lyrics were penned on the days leading up to the recording sessions for the vocals. Test lyrics are used to get a feel for the songs in rehearsals and then used live, often chopped and changed to what’s comfortable to perform until the final versions are recorded. The lyrical theme ticks the boxes for our style, nothing flash, just pure, satanic, Speed Metal mayhem and chaos.

2. Worship the Goat:

‘Worship…’ was not as straight forward, more time was spent fining tuning this in the rehearsal rooms and even on the live stage. It was the first proper ‘thrasher’ that came together for this album with a HEAVY Toxic Holocaust influence musically and lyrically as we’re sure some can tell by listening to it. The theme conjures images of 60s and 70s British Hammer Horror films, go watch ‘The Devil Rides Out’ if you need any more convincing.

3. Hail Death:

Hail Death is one the oldest songs on the on the album, it originally featured on our debut self-titled demo which we released back in 2018 and arguably was the strongest song on it hence why it was re-recorded for this album. The theme of ‘Hail…’ became our mantra for a while, like ‘Howling…’: nothing flashy, just pure, evil madness and mayhem without mercy.

4. Send Them to Hell:

The OLDEST song on the album, the first song ever written for Devastator and one of the shortest. It’s no secret at this point that the Punk and D-Beat elements in this band are as prominent as the Thrash and Speed in our music, ‘Send…’ was the crusty, D-beat drenched starting gun to what you hear today. The theme is a visceral ‘f*ck you’ to everything and everyone.

5. Death Slut:

The horny sister track to the former, ‘Death…’ is another no-nonsense Punk song that was written extremely quickly with the idea that it would follow ‘Send…’ in the live set. The theme deals with graveyards, witches and their particular “admiration” for the dead…

6. Spiritual Warfare:

‘Spiritual…’ is one of our more “adventurous” songs written so far, musically it was a collaborative effort between Richard and Chris. Chris had a handful of the early riffs and he and Richard arranged them showed the rest of us in the rehearsal room, it came together rather quickly. Chris wrote some draft lyrics and handed them to Tom to “fine tune”, the song went from sacrilegious attack on modern organised Christianity to a battle between the light and dark in an individual struggling to come to terms with their faith or lack of.

7. Baptised in Blasphemy:

Early on it was pretty clear that ‘Baptised…’ was to become the title track of this album, as a long time set closer for roughly over a year it fits as the final word in this hellscape we have created. The song both musically and lyrically is a tribute to the mighty Bathory, a band we owe a lot to in terms of our sound and musical approach. This was the first song written with this new album in mind and more than likely the first to get off the ground from the rehearsal room to the live stage if our memory serves us correctly.