Not only do they have one of the most generic band names of all time, but this Florida act plays generic black/death metal with a terrible recording on this ridiculously brief three-song demo. It's all about speed: Lots of tremolo picking, lots of blasting beats, blazing leads... you know the drill. It's right on the line between the Angelcorpse school of death metal and the newer Marduk school of black metal, but it's not interesting musically or lyrically, and has very few moments that make me nod my head along thinking, "Hey, that part's not so bad." The sad thing is that this band features ex-members of Diabolic of Pessimist, so they could be doing so much more than this. There are a few rhythm riffs and solos that I enjoy, but none of the songs are good as a whole. This is very bland and forgettable. As for the recording? It's pretty quiet. The drums are rigid and jump out a lot, right behind the snarling vocals. The guitars and bass lack power and sound dirty. The playing can be sloppy and there are a lot of timing falters on the double bass drumming, etc. The guitar playing is a lot tighter than the drumming, sadly the recording doesn't offer enough clarity for it to really shine. I'm just not into a lot of this. Because come to think of it the vocals seem weak and out of place to me, too. The CD-R comes with the shoddiest packaging I've seen in awhile. Sure, it's in a jewel case, but the text is all pixilated, the logo is lame, the fonts are bland, there are really no visuals at all (the CD face has some trees or something on there but it's printed off center), and the lyric sheet is just folded up inside on a standard sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper. They also fucked up on the lyric sheet where they denote who plays which leads, so instead of retyping them they scribbled through the mistakes and handwrote in the proper band member names instead. That really shows that they're "willing to go that extra mile" (sarcasm). It is cool that they bothered to include the lyrics, but the content, while it could be interesting, is worded too generically and doesn't interest me as a result. "Voodoo rites mask religion, Spirited creation then begins, Dead eyes hypnotic trance, Dimming conscience respect the spirits, Dances of the dead, Possessed the erotic, Attractions of the offering, Divine consumption..." I don't know, guys that have come from far better bands should not by any means be releasing a demo this unprofessional. I couldn't believe it when I read the band's bio (after listening to the demo). Everything about this pretty much screams "inexperienced musicians rushing to get a demo out", but that's not the case... so what the hell went wrong?
[self-released]
Running time - 10:34, Tracks: 3
[Notable tracks: none of them stand out to me]
Unholy Ghost - http://www.unholyghost.com
