Abyssinister is a death metal band that has seen better days.  Lead singer Ivan (Nico Zahniser) is a perfectionist who has alienated most of the members of the group with his abrasive personality.  Their records aren’t selling.  Their European tour was a disaster.  Hardly anyone can pronounce the band’s name and those who can think that Abyssinister broke up.  And the band is on the verge of breaking up for real until Ivan announces that he’s hired the famed Norwegian producer, Fleming (Ray Goodwin), to produce their next album.

Agreeing to give stardom one last shot, Abyssinister travels out to Fleming’s isolated farm and recording studio.  After they arrive, Ivan announces that he has a copy of a supposedly cursed concerto that he wants the band to record.  The band records the piece and it sounds great but what neither the band nor their manager, Shadia (Shadia Martin), knows is that Ivan had made a deal with the Devil and now, there is a price to pay.

Full of inside jokes about the death metal scene and featuring some surprisingly realistic gore, Death Metal turned out to be much better than I was expecting it to be.  The first half is a humorous satire of every cliché about the Death Metal scene while the second half is full of effective jump scares and frightening scenes.  Every member of the band and their groupies get a chance to make an impression before the concerto is recorded and you actually do worry about them once everything starts to fall apart.  I especially liked the performance of Chris Richards, as the otherwise mild-mannered drummer who legally changed his name to Baphomet.

Death Metal is both an effective satire of the hysteria surrounding death metal music and an effective horror movie.