Napalm Records

The official follow-up to 2016's insidious Trust No One -- the 2018 covers LP Outlaws 'til the End, Vol. 1 paid tribute to the band's country heroes -- Dealing With Demons I is the initial installment of an ambitious double album from the veteran Santa Barbara-based melodic death metallers. The exorcism begins with "Keep Away from Me," which sees frontman Dez Fafara confronting a lifetime of agoraphobia via a Molotov cocktail of djenty string bends, punitive blast beats, and funereal ambiance. The blazing ghost story "Iona" unspools in intricate patterns that harbor moments of dark, melodic grandeur, while the mosh-worthy title track plays to all of the group's strengths, administering wave after wave of terraforming grooves that leave behind nothing but pestilence in their wake. Closer "Scars Me Forever" presents itself as a ballad, but like everything that came before it -- including the slow-churning "You Give Me a Reason to Drink," a collaboration with Fafara's son Simon Blade -- eventually settles into a punishing cadence that marries melody and might with the kind of precision that can only come from years spent studying the dark sonic arts. The unrelenting Dealing with Demons bears all of the hallmarks of its predecessors, including cover art that belongs on the side of the world's most sinister boogie van, but it aims for catharsis instead of apoplexy. © James Christopher Monger /TiVo