Prosthetic - DEMOlition

Rising from the country of Sweden comes the one man death metal project Prosthetic. The mind behind the music is none other than Mats Andersson. When considering that all the composition, recording, programming has been done by the one person, this small demo shows how immensely talented he is.

As mentioned, the sound to this music is fast. Fast and incredibly aggressive. To be completely honest, that would have to be the highlight to this demo. You really can feel the guitars, drums, bass and layered vocals attacking you as you listen to it. Prosthetic has the complete attitude of metal down pact.

Now that's the history and the atmosphere. Now we talk about the individual sounds this demo release has to offer (and it's individual songs). The guitars are a bit of a frenzy. This is a large part of what equates to the aggressive atmosphere. They rapidly propel their way through every single song giving absolutely no relief or rest. Each riff for each song is individual in it's own right. And due to this each song does actually have a different mood.

The first song "Duvjakt" is a rapid smattering of notes thrown into your face, making sure that you're not quite sure where this song is going, yet letting you know that when it gets there it's going to be a wall of sound in it's own right. Even the guitar solo has very little structure to it's name. It's not badly done. But neither is it entirely easy to digest.

The second song "Cykeltjuvar" is a lot more structured. Relying more on triplets within it's riffs. This makes it a much more catchy song as well. While I cannot really say much more than that to it, I would say this would be my favourite song from the "DEMOlition" demo.

"Egocentric" was a surprising addition to the demo. This one takes a step back from the brutal death metal feel by being given much more thrash orientated verse vocals. Meanwhile the chorus and bridge has quite a gothenburg melodic death metal feel to it. This makes it by far the most palatable song of the release. A stand alone track in it's own right, which, while having it's own sound, still lets itself fit into the midst of the former two songs.

"Scrambled Legs" picks up where "Egocentric" left off with it's thrash influence. In no way does this song resemble the death metal feel of the earlier tracks. All vocals are done in a thrash style, which syncopates with the guitar style. The track is the black sheep of the whole release. Apart from it's aggressive speed and attitude, it doesn't hold to the same composition style and it certainly doesn't really fit amongst the other songs. One could even say it sounds as though it was composed by a different band/project.

Despite all said above, there are a couple of things that find themselves consistent through this release. For anyone who knows their death metal, they should be able to hear a strong influence of Dimension Zero found throughout all the drumming present in these songs. In exactly the same way they keep up the "to ka to ka to ka" sound that can be found within every single Dimension Zero song. This makes sense, considering the unrelenting guitar riffs that create their own cacophony. It is strongly clear that a wall of sound was the desired effect for these songs. Along with the drumming that finds itself consistent throughout all songs, the vocals all have much the same style too. Aside from "Scrambled Legs" and the minimal amount of thrash vocals within "Egocentric" the majority of the vocals have a beastly like blackened death metal feel to them.

In synopsis, this demo is a mess. A splattering of all kinds of sounds and influences combined and compressed into four tracks of aggressive metal. It's in no way bad. WIthout a doubt this is truly a release worth spent the time getting your hands on, and it certainly shows remarkable promise for a first release of such a talented single composer. However, a bit more structure, a bit more attention and direction would certainly help make future releases a much higher standard.



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Monarch! - Sortilège

This year I had the opportunity to see Monarch! live for the second time as they toured Australia in 2011. And although I have no idea if they played the same set or not due to their guitarist passing out mid show the first time they toured here back in 2009, I did have the opportunity to buy this new release.

It was the same price as all the other merchandise full length CD's on the table, and considering how much of a fan I am of Monarch, I quickly purchased the CD without asking any questions. It wasn't until I was home and had put the CD into my computer that I found out this was not a full length but a single (or an EP as Encyclopaedia Metallum seems to consider it).

The track is not much longer than ten minutes and is in my opinion, a completely new direction for Monarch. While the release is still definitely drone doom, it is no longer sludge influenced but dark ambient. If there was any way to compare it, I would say this song is to Monarch, what "A Shaving of the Horn That Speared You" is for Sunn O))). A dark, eerie and almost haunting journey from the start of the song to the end. Unlike Sunn O)))'s song however, this song requires your full attention. If one was to put this album on and have it as background music for whatever activity one is up to, the song will be over before you know it and you'll barely even realise you were hearing it. However, once you pay attention to it you'll hear the feedback slowly creeping up in volume, shifting in sound as it suddenly becomes accentuated by the drums that step in and start a repetitous beat that continues for most of the song. The bass and guitar feedback move about each other and then the vocals come in, sounding as though they are being yelled from a great distance away. The song builds itself up at an incredibly slow and steady pace without really requiring any change at all. Once it reaches it's climax the drum pattern changes to something yet more simple again, and the diminuendo begins to gradually pace itself towards the end of the song.

I wouldn't say I prefer this release over their earlier work. I wouldn't say I prefer their earlier work over this one either. It stands on it's own, as a unique creation by Monarch. Had I known that this release would only hold a single eleven minute long song, I still would have bought it. And not only for the music either, the album art is exceptional. On the front cover is an image of a Devil's Curse being acted out in silver, black and white. Inside is some forest photography and a series of lit candles burning along with the band members named in simple font. While on the back is more candles, heathen skulls and people standing around. All in all artwork and the music go hand in hand, each perfectly resembling the other.

All in all this is a very tasteful release that is well worth owning and having in any drone doom fan's collection.



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Herlighet - A Warrior Never Dies

When writing a review that requires a rating I always remember where my points stand. 50% is for albums that are not bad but completely fail to be good at the same time. Something that was extremely mediocre, utterly forgettable because it was not good enough to be enjoyable. Or something not bad enough to remember for how awful it was. Anything above 50% means it had some good points to it, anything below that means it had elements of something wrong, whether that be bad composition, unbearable recording quality, or musician mistakes. Since I have given this release a 54% that means I consider it to be just above that mediocre standard.

There was nothing wrong with the songs that were on this album. The sound quality was very stereotypical of black metal. The musicians were tight. There were no sloppy sections where the band could have gone out of time or moments where a particular musician couldn't keep up and made a mistake. Even the vocalist has skill with his black metal vocals and his chants as well as spoken word sections. The female vocals that came in now and then followed the synth note and didn't waver at all. All in all this christian black metal band shows a lot of promise considering everything they did right.

So why such a low rating?

It was boring. Almost the entirety of the album was tedious, uninspiring, flat and emotionless. The composition of almost every single song was just an aggressive facepunch of nothing. Distorted guitars being picked rapidly, drums hammering away and synth coming in when appropriate. There was almost no atmosphere at all. No catchy riffs that were created to draw me back to listening to the song. There were no crushingly heavy sections designed to give me the chills and there was certainly no piano melodies to give me a musical dream like atmosphere.

In fact, the pianist was one of the worst bits about this band. Aside from when he was doing some truly uninspiring synth work, he was rapidly hammering out the same notes over and over. It was as though he found a chord he liked and continued to play only those keys for the rest of the song.

The only good thing about having this album, was knowing that I won it for free through a radio give away and did not have to pay for it.

Now, as for the album art? That was actually disgraceful. All of it was like a dirt brown smear kept in condition underneath the jewel disk case. It was also uneven. Open up the entire booklet and you'll find that after each fold the colour changes, giving it the look that sections of it were left out in the sun. As though the sun faded away what minimal colour they decided to give it. And that's not the worst bit. It's pixelated to all bloody hell. It's like they asked an artist if they could use his imagery for their front cover and then they stretched it to the size of the CD cover causing it to blur. Then, after they managed that, they used Microsoft Paint to create every page afterwards. Each single letter is made of pixel blocks, and the first letter to every song is a mess of cream white. I do know that the first letter is an attempt at making it look "mediæval" but considering the pixelation, the first letter becomes completely unreadable. This mess is carried on to the back art of the CD. While ripping the CD I accidently named the first song "Ely Over the Oceans" as I couldn't tell that the letter "F" was not an "E."

Along with all of this, the song titles contained some pretty bad grammar. Examples include "I Desire Drink Your Blood," "When Will Back The Morning?" and "Crying Out Knees To The Lord."

And yet despite all this, Herlighet is considered well known amongst the underground, christian black metal scene. With examples like this and other bands such as "From Ashes" "Synnöve" and "A.W.A.S." it's no small wonder people think christian metal is a pathetic representation of the secular scene.



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