Maledicta "Eruption From Insides" CD
[self-released]
Quite a sporadic demo from this Italian bunch. The first track comes out right away sounding like Machine Head meets nu-metal, then it's into a quick piano instrumental that has a spacious gothic sort of feel; "Destruction" is far more melodic and interesting, adding more piano, some clean guitars, male and female singing vocals as well as the usual aggressive sneers... it's a very different vibe than the other tracks. "Five Demons" uses weirder and more electronic sounding keyboards along with some amazing solos, almost giving off a minimal progressive sort of feeling - which continues during bits of "The Dark Alchemy of the Elements", which are in a sense reminiscent of some of Dan Swanö's work (though not as good, I must state). "Traditional Neverending Friend" brings back the nu-metal groove with some distortion and industrial influenced vocals, laced with more of the prog/goth undertones; the title track breaks out some acoustic guitars and a lot more emphatic male singing as well as some Swedish inspired dual guitar harmonies; "Praha Drinking Team" is another little piano piece (very poorly titled and complete with an upbeat old western barroom sprawl that somehow morphs into dark ambient textures and heavily manipulated/overdramatic spoken vocals - not my thing at all)... I can't get a hold on what's going on here. There is no "big picture", so to speak. As far as the production goes, the guitar tone is usually really damn good, as are the keyboards. The vocals sound alright, I think stylistically I'm just not that fond of the inflection of the aggressive vocals, they don't fit the music properly. The percussion could be more natural, and the bass louder or more defined, but for the most part they're on the right path. The CD-R comes in a slim jewel case with some very high quality printing on the insert. It looks professional, but I think it was probably done on a very nice laser printer. The art is pretty abstract, and the song titles are weird, so I have no clue what the content of the tracks might actually cover. I'm torn with this one. Portions of it I really like, but as a whole it's not that enjoyable because it's so inconsistent. I can't say I feel like the band really knows what they're trying to go for. At its best this is a promising demo of fairly typical metal with a diverse range of influences, but at its worst it's a cheesy mishmash of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Numerous tracks need not run more than six minutes, and the release certainly need not run more than 40, so I don't know what the future holds for these guys. (5/10)
Running time - 43:00, Tracks: 9
[Notable tracks: the whole thing is too inconsistent, really]
Maledicta - http://www.maledicta-team.com

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