Thursday, July 30, 2009

Cauldron Born - Blood Crusade 90%




Cauldron Born is a death metal band from Pakistan. This is their first demo, two songs, called Blood Crusade.

The first track, Blood Crusade, starts out blasting with a pound-your-face in type riff, fast and thrashy as hell, but headbangable, kind of like a riff off ov Scream Bloody Gore. It then slows down into a bit simpler riff, sounds even a bit Egyptian with the higher notes alternating with open strings, the thrash influence is very apparant. Catchy and brutal, just the way I like it. After an acoustic part and a short solo, the Egyptian influences are really fucking glowing now like a bitch after getting fucked. To mix things up even more, they throw in a drum solo that is like a beat to a fucking war-march. It goes on like this for a while, multiple interesting riffs, before going into a breakdown. At first I'm thinking "Shit, here comes a boring metalcore-esque breakdown" but after about five seconds I realized it was groovy as fuck, and again was like something to play to a marching army. The vocals in this song are either phlegmy highs or brutal, indecipherable lows. Very nice vocals, I don't see many bands doing highs like these guys. By the end ov this track, I had already decided this was going to get an 85 or higher.

The next and last song, Exit Wounds, starts with an interesting enough war-movie intro. A short drum intro, and the band breaks into a thrashy Slayer mode. This song stays in a semi-interesting thrashy midpace groove. The problem with this is, they gallop the open E constantly without any breaks for a lot of the song which gets old if overused. It's far from a bad track though, later it gets some high riffing and sounds pretty good. An average thrashy song, but enjoyable nonetheless. Right when I'm getting bored, they finally mix things up with a very nice clean guitar and a far-off, dreamy sounding guitar solo. This really improves the song a lot. It breaks back into thrash mode again, with a very good and interesting solo.

To conclude this review, this is a very good peice of modern death/thrash, has a nice blend of old and new school vibe to it as well. Interesting vocals, very pheghmy and distinctive, I enjoy them. The guitar got kind of boring in the riffing of the second song, so I'd suggest they'd have more variation though. Drums I think are on a machine, but while simplistic, they get the job done. You should check out this band, www.myspace.com/cauldronborn666

Friday, July 10, 2009

Decaying Citadel - Where the Ancient Bones Are Laid To Rest.



This is the first demo of New Jersey funeral doom band Decaying Citadel. It's a two track demo, lasts about 22 minutes and I fucking love it =D

The first song, Chaos Ivocation starts out with an admittedly horrible intro. It sounds at first like someone just fiddling around with a wannabe doom riff. This lame riff goes on for about 2 and a half minutes, right before you are about to turn it off, it gets amazingly better. Fucking heavy ass chords come in, sludgy and demonic, slow and grinding. Here, it gets good. As you are starting to fall into trance that funeral doom puts you into after a few minutes, the vocals start. The vocals are distant and distorted shreiks, remenicant of Burzum or Xasthur. Now, about seven minutes in, it goes into an even slower riff, throwing you deeper into the atmosphere. The song ends this way. You should have your head just about crushed by now.

The second song starts out with a short melancholic acoustic intro, it's nice and a good change of pace. Afterwards, we have a trippy, slow, bass solo. I caught traces of traditional doom influence in the last song, but here is where it really manifests itself. The guitar chimes in after a minute or so. For some reason, the tone is different than on the first track, but it's a lot better. Deeper, heavier, just a much better tone, louder too. I don't see why he didn't have this tone on the first song, it would have been an improvement. The vocals are a lot more prominent on this one, they are great with the again slow, sludgy and crushing guitars. After a bit, there is a short acousic interlude for some variation. The crushing riffs continue on for a few minutes until another acoustic part, this one a bit longer, with chords. We get a different riff after, this one oozing traditional doom influence. Continues in all it's glory until the end with an acoustic outro.

This demo is amazing, fucking trance-inducing funeral doom, crushing, interesting, varying, absolutely everything you could ask for in a funeral doom release. The intro and tone of the guitar in the first track is the only problem. Other than that, it's perfect.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Scordatura - Garrote



Scordatura is a British death metal group, this is their two song demo, Garrote.

The first track, Bones of Hades starts out as some bilsteringly fast, tremelo picked death metal, with some chunky palm-muting here and there, and stays on this course before a kickass little drum and bass solo. Then goes into a section a bit slower, with small bass breaks, before going back to the speed again for about 45 secs. Right before it starts to get boring, they throw in a melodic riff to mix things up, I love this band's style. And to finish, fuckin hits you in the face with a kickass breakdown to get you headbanging. Fucking awesome.

Next and final track, Garrote, has a small drum intro, before going into an alternate picking frenzy, ala Gorgasm. Then we get some melodic riffs that sound bit classical influenced, I wish they had kept the second riff section going longer. The rest of the song is pretty much melodic brutality. Melodic in an Aborted or Gorgasm way, not melodeath.

Well this shit kicked ass. I was expecting just an average modern DM band when I was first doing this review, but it's way more than that. These guys play modern death metal, but with REAL variation, that keeps you there. Also, good production as well. Probably my one complaint is the vocals. They are good, nothing wrong with them, but they're not too interesting. They do their job and help the music alright, but it coud use some screams, maybe a few squeals, some predators or something. Vocals are the one thing on this album that need more variation. Wish it was longer too. 96/100