Just as rock 'n' roll has it's shadow canon, the Trout Mask Replicas and SMiLEs that offset the Revolvers and Blonde on Blondes, extreme metal has an alternate-universe hall of fame. The 1993 collection Nespithe, the only LP released by the eccentric Finnish death metal band Demilich, is one of these... It's unmistakably a death-metal record, but compared to what else hit the market around the time of it's 1993 release - the year death metal went major label via Morbid Angel's bar-raising Covenant, and a deal between Earache and Columbia that yielded landmarks such as Carcass's Heartwork and Entombed's Wolverine Blues - the record's match of labyrinthine, riff-drunk composition and burp-like vocals registers as outsider art. Even stacked up against fellow Finnish groups Convulse and Demigod, each of whom issued potent debuts filled with relatively orthodox death metal in 92, Nespithe sounds like the work of brainiac obsessives (Pitchfork).
