Review: Lay to Waste “No Shape or Regret” CD

20 minutes of scathing death/grind out of Louisiana. Some of the more hurried note-based riffs are definitely a little sloppy, but this is a promising demo otherwise. I think the songs can get too long for the amount of changes they offer, so things lose focus at times, but there are some killer riffs here and there. Some of the midpaced breaks in opener "With Desolate Grace" totally have a classic Florida death metal vibe, and "High Water Hate Mark" is one of the longest tracks and flirts with some of the most technical runs (Not to mention a slick ass lead break out of nowhere - tighten it up and mess with more of that stuff!). Like many of these bands the focus tends to lean towards high speeds a little too frequently, as some of the barely slower (i.e. still pretty damn fast) riffs are awesome, and the breakdowns definitely pop out a hell of a lot. So, if they could harness more of that power and blend it with the speed they'd be set. The real winner comes with "Provincia Propagate" though, where things are much more linear in structure with lots of ripping death metal picking patterns and one slow passage at the end with lots of winding dissonance that really sounds fucking awesome - standing out more so than any other portion of the entire CD. There's a slightly longer solo in "The Life and Times and the Damage Done", also with some rough patches, but damn... if they clean that stuff up and put some more development behind it they could really shred. For a demo I can live with the sound quality. It's a little muddy and the vocals and drums feel a separated from the guitars (I'm not really hearing any bass in there), but it sounds okay. The guitar tone is definitely on the right track, and I don't mind the vocals aside from their distance. The drums are way too clicky and machinated though, so I'd try to work on that. The CD-R comes with a package printed from a home printer, so it looks sort of shoddy but gets the job done. The cover image of birds hovering over a withered tree isn't bad, but it could all use a little cleaning up. It works for a brief demo though, so screw it. Not too shabby. They need to clean up some rough spots across the board, but this is a decent demo that points to better things for these guys. There's some damn good material here.