Poland’s Black Metal horde DEMONIC SLAUGHTER ain’t any rookies in the Polish underground Black Metal scene regarding their back catalog of releases that they have got out since the band was put together in 2006: 3 full-length studio albums and 3 EPs are DEMONIC SLAUGHTER’s achievements within those 6 years the band has existed. That’s pretty impressive in itself, I think. "Dark Essence" is these disciples of dark arts latest 7-track recording – and considered as an EP release, too. DEMONIC SLAUGHTER’s Black Metal goes straight into the deepest roots of the whole Black Metal genre: it’s grim, menacing, cold and raw sounding – actually giving oddly an impression this is just one of the band’s rehearsals that the guys have captured on tape, and later decided to release as a CD-format too. Well, whatever it may sound like to some of your ears, this is still a studio recording nevertheless, in which probably the production level has been kept on a lower level on purpose – just to add some more pure rawness and grimness into DEMONIC SLAUGHTER’s, kind of MAYHEM-meets-MORTUARY DRAPE type of obscure Black Metal. "Black Storm Invocation" is this certain type of a song that brings the occult Italian Black Metal legends MORTUARY DRAPE to mind in some peculiar way, having a really spooky yet foreboding approach to it. The same applies to a song called ‘Vampyr’, which also ends this EP. Otherwise this is basically sort of meat & potatoes kind of Black Metal that counts exactly on those a bit ‘safer’ elements that make Black Metal to sound like Black Metal in the very first place. So, no new colors have been added on the existing painting this time either. Therefore I don’t know whether this release is that essential to get after all although the amount of darkness it manages to spread around, is still pretty noteworthy. Finding out more about the true dark essence, go to: www.myspace.com/demonicslaughter, www.hellthrasher.com