This power trio from Chicago dropped one of the best heavy metal demos of the last ten years with Cryptic and I’m still hoping for a full length to drop one of those days. Same for one of their main comparisons, Detroit’s Demon Bitch. Ancient Seance’s Syl Smith is active with the solid USPM quintet Munition (worth checking out!) but I hope he can come back to this band. It’s a pretty raw demo for the genre, it’s not clean or anything but I think it adds something worthy to their sound. It’s unsweetened heavy metal and it’s fine that it’s rough around the edges, I personally like it and find it endearing, it’s something I like in bands such as Scalare, Molten Chains or Darkthrone with material like The Underground Resistance.
It’s fairly inaccessible as far as heavy metal goes, the vocals are diverse, from high pitched to a more standard clean voice combined with wizardly harsh ones. Musically, it ranges to speedier trad metal to bass heavy atmospheric heavy/doom (the first part of Cryptic Lullaby) that sounds like a more arcane and obscure take on Alice in Chains to the more unhinged sound that’s “popular” in the Michigan trad metal scene (a sort of intense Thin Lizzified Mercyful Fated style of metal). It’s well written, well played and like I said, it’s not diminished by the non-Nuclear Blast production. The bass is thick, the drumming is natural, authentic and picks up the pace well and the guitar playing is relatively inventive for the style. Very very good demo, I want more.
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