Review: Spawn of the Matriarch “s/t” CD

I don't know what to make of this band. It comes off as a bit of a joke thanks to fake band member names like "El Otro" (among others), a bio that claims the band hails from Tajikistan (they most certainly do not), and a horrible band photo that's basically a "comedic" posed affair in front of some place called Casket Mart, complete with goofy text attacking overly PC types, which has nothing to do with this music at all and cheapens the visual aesthetic of everything else. The layout looks pretty good otherwise, but then again there are weird song titles like "Abominable Pastiche" and "Secret of the Nocturnal Weaver", so I'm not sure what the deal is. Musically it's basically quirky doom metal with a drum machine and all sorts of influences in the mix, with some faster death metal riffing and blasting drum patterns, a few glitches of electronic noise, melodic lead lines and disharmonic runs, plenty of slow to midpaced chord progressions, a few breaks of atmospheric synths, jazzy clean passages and avant-garde textures, exaggeratedly deep vocal growls and higher snarls, etc. Some of it's not that bad, but the recording definitely needs work and the writing is too disjointed. It kind of goes from riff to riff to riff to riff, in long tracks that end up being sort of messy and lacking in structure. The sound? The bass and guitars are decent, but the vocals often seem forced, and I'm not wild on the drum machine. All of the tones need work, but with a more balanced mix I think they could get by (on a demo) with the guitar and bass as they are. It's heavy, a little unnatural, but heavy... so the thinness of the percussion is an issue, and as stated I'm not a big fan of the growling vocals. But honestly it all boils down to being unsure if this is a joke or not. If it's a joke, hey, have fun... but I'm not into it. But if it's only partially supposed to be humorous, I'd actually take the time to recommend they cut that shit out and start taking things more seriously, because there are some cool riffs and a certain degree of potential present. It's just that all of the songs are all over the place. "Blood on the Plains" has some grating black metal riffs unlike any of the other tracks, but still slows things down to a destructive pace; and the aforementioned "Secret of the Nocturnal Weaver" is a brief and somewhat goofy little keyboard instrumental. I don't know. In the end, I'm not a fan of this demo, but I feel like they're wasting talent. Clearly as players and writers they're competent, but they need to focus their strengths to really hit on an effective outcome.