Four tracks of hard as nails metallic hardcore with gruff vocal shouts and vicious breakdowns, just the way I like it. Some of the chord progressions get a little groovy (notably in "World on My Shoulders"), but for the most part it's midpaced chunkiness of the 90's variety - the kind of stuff that would've been perfectly at home on the "East Coast Assault" compilation series. Think Merauder meets All Out War or something like that. "Torment" has more of a European flare with some metal riffing and extremely subtle hints of melody, but those occurrences are rare. "Darkest Day" is the longest track at 3:32 and builds up slowly with a solid intro and a few areas where they layer feedback in, which sounds killer. The recording sounds fine for a demo. It's definitely on the rugged side around the edges and needs more overall volume and force to its presence, but I really like the guitar tone and the character of the vocals. The bass could be louder and the drums need a little more roundness, but fuck it, the end result sounds fine for 11 minutes of demo material. As usual I have a major problem with the fact that the demo has no package. Almost literally. The CD-R has the band name and URL written on the face in marker, and a small piece of paper is in the slim jewel case with the song titles handwritten on it. That's it. A horrible decision. I'm all for doing things the D.I.Y. way and conserving money, but it would only take a few hours of design time (or less) and about a quarter per cover to print up some artwork for these things. I'd highly recommend something like that if this is a demo that's going to end up getting circulated, because it'd probably get tossed by a lot of people looking like this. Good stuff. I look forward to hearing more. I'd give it a 7/10 if it looked better. I can't help but be a shithead about it, I'm an artist... what can I say? Presentation matters.
[self-released]
Running time - 11:05, Tracks: 4
[Notable tracks: World on My Shoulders, Darkest Day]
Pound for Pound - http://www.poundforpound.net
