Tuesday 14 May 2013

Cemetery Fog - Journey to Hell (2013) | 55%


''We had the munchies so we had to stop at McDonald on our way to Hell''

Hailing from the eternal nation of Finland, Cemetery Fog is a new obscure project and this is their first demo. I found them the day they were submitted to the Archived, I was the moderator who approved them and let me tell you that it's rare that we discover bands that we truly like and after 3 djent bands, 2 post hardcore ones and 2 ambient suicidal acoustic ''metal'' listening to Cemetery Fog was like a balm on my wounds. This 16 minutes demo tape ointment piqued my interest and I emailed the band asking if they wanted me to write a review for the release. Well, uh...here it is !

Crossing over many dimensions, the band (well, perhaps it's only one guy, I actually don't know...Maybe it's Napero!!!) has recorded a fine first demo. While in a busy Old School Death Metal scene with bands like Krypts, Lantern or Desecresy and a productive black metal scene with Baptism, Horna, Satanic Warmaster, Cemetery Fog acts like a blender. Reminding me of fellow Finns Barathrum, they mix black metal with a lot of doom for a raw sound. There's also some death metal to be found but it's less apparent because of the mix of the demo. The production is decent for a first release, it's very muddy and dirty and fits their old school analog vibe well. The bass is almost absent though and the drums could be, well interesting. The riffs are mostly mediocre but for a first release, the songwriting is okay, it's nothing groundbreaking but it will please your worthless soul with its dark slow riffs and out of tune lead work. There's some cool riffs like the sick doom/death part at 9 minutes and the last track has some influences from traditional doom. The vocals are bestial, deep growls, nothing particularly amazing and they're often weak and they lack range. They kinda sound like shit, voluntarily but their place in the mix is okay. I think the production is suitable for their needs but they lack a valid and very interesting sound. I'm sure they want to sound like shit, well I prefer my shit to be more consistent.

There's almost 3000 metal bands in Finland, I'm sure I'm not an asshole to say that Cemetery Fog needs to do a lot to become a caretaker of the metal underground. They need to nourish the earth with a lot of manure and fertilizer and I don't know if they have the necessary shovel. We'll have to wait and see.

The whole thing is pretty primitive both in spirit and in sound and that's a plus if you like your metal without any modernity and with an analog sound. The songwriting while still amateurish shows some promises but they're not quite in Hell yet. They're still busy eating a Big Mac.


McDonald Finland

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