Coming out of Florida this new band (whose members have been involved with Timescape Zero, Anger, Violent Deed, and Beyond Reason, among others) plays metalcore in the traditional sense with a few more aggressive influences that lean towards crossover thrash and grind. The general approach relies on burly chord progressions with scarce hints at melody, but not in a simple chugga chugga way. There's more to it than that, and at times they increase the speed or even throw in what I would deem post-hardcore textures. It's rhythmic, but not groovy, and that's key. The vocals range from throaty yells to lower growls or even whispers, but I'd probably toss the growls because the yelling is a lot more energetic and has a great sort of uncontrolled rage going on. The slower "All I Have is My Shadow" brings in some slightly gruff singing, but I'm not into that delivery either. I'm all about those raging yells! The demo closes with "Plague (The Black Plague Remix)" by Martini Kulture, vocalist Adel Souto's experimental noise project. It's pretty raw, lo-fi noise with a lot of midrange tones and seems to be based around loops. Not bad. I wish the tonal range was crisper, but I like the atmosphere. The rest of the recording needs a lot of work. For one thing it needs to be mastered because the output levels are frighteningly low (as well as fluctuating - there are a select few areas where you can literally hear the volume levels increasing/decreasing). Aside from that it's muddy, and the guitar tone has an unnatural sounding distortion that has a weird sheen hanging over it. The bass tone is thick as hell, but it's so loud that it throbs away without enough definition, while the drums are weird in that they sound pretty natural aside from the cymbals, which sound sort of like a drum machine. The vocals sound good, but the low growls are overpowering and mixed far louder than the other vocal styles. So... in essence everything needs tweaking, I guess. The bass tone and the vocals are the most promising as it stands, but the mix definitely needs tightening up and the tones need to be cleaner first and foremost. The CD-R comes in a DVD case (for the first 50 copies) with xeroxed artwork, an insert, several stickers, and a pin. (All of the other copies are on 3" CD-R's and come wrapped in the lyric insert with the band logo printed on the outside.) The cover art is sort of pixilated and sloppy, so that could look better, but other than that the text is all clean, if not almost too plain. The lyric insert is printed simply on white paper in plain text. The lyrics are mostly personal and fluctuate from the reflective to the vengeful, sometimes more interesting than others. Lines like "She means so much to me. I'll bathe in her blood!" do nothing for me at all and come off as a bit stale and generic, but others such as "Some people are like tumors, psychic vampires, trying to take us from this world. I will not calm." hint at more promising content to be had. The song titles are also somewhat sarcastic or tongue-in-check, it seems, but it can be confusing as to how seriously they're to be taken since some of lyrics seem almost tongue-in-cheek as well. I don't know, I had high hopes for this so maybe that's why I'm being harder on it, but with work this band could still be very good. I like these songs a whole lot, it's just that the recording and presentation are lacking, and I think some additional effort lyrically and sonically would yield the results that I think this band is truly capable of. Don't rule them out down the line...
[self-released]
Running time - 17:45, Tracks: 5
[Notable tracks: Plague, Senor Bue?o vs. Mr. Fistface]
None Dare Call it Treason - http://www.feastofhateandfear.com/NDCIT/
