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Aequorea, Lucidity, Paraylzer & Schwarzwald
August 7, 2010
CHRIS
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Aequorea - Demo 2010
Nevada city’s post-rock experimental outfit Aequorea offers a demo of some promising musical material, but it’s not exactly resonating just yet. First, the sampling is somewhat distracting (especially Sam Kinison). Once past that little nuisance, the music is okay, nothing terrific or earth-shattering. I understand what the band is attempting, but I just don’t see it being hailed too highly in itself.

The music is talented, no doubt, but the general feel is one of background noise at this point. It’s music to fill the space in a room, but nothing that stops you dead and makes your head turn around toward the stereo. That’s not to say these guys don’t have the chops to undertake such a feat, but this demo isn’t exactly it right now. You can easily tell this is a few guys getting together in a room and just going for it, which is cool, but there’s no set progressive direction for these ears.

There’s some good instrumental passages with some underlying ambience here and there, especially in “Song 6”, and I’m thinking that with some added effort and a little more attention paid to some production this might be a good band for the future. The experimental progressive effort is not one to be taken on lightly, and while there are solid moments casually dispersed here and there there’s too much of the obligatory and not enough of the innovative working in the music.    
Paralyzer - Paralyzing Thrash Attack
Release Date:  July 26, 2010
Band Self Released

TRACK LISTING:
1.  Death Squad  2.  The Plague  3.  Citizens Dissent  4.  Hell Zombie Armageddon           -    Total playing time: 12:09
Chicago’s thrash scene has been pretty non-existent since, oh, let’s see…the early 90’s at least. We have some good underground death metal surfacing in the way of Cardiac Arrest and such, but thrash has been sadly underrepresented. So along comes Paralyzer to try and right the ship, so to speak.

What is good about the demo Paralyzing Thrash Attack is its style, harkening back to a time of mid-eighties metal that kept radio and MTV nicely at bay. You’d never hear Predator or Vio-Lence on the radio, that’s for sure, and this music is a throwback to that wondrous period when purity was still the ideal. Another positive is the band’s enthusiasm, which for two young guys in a virtual cornucopia of rap and pop drivel in the American Idol era says something. When listening to the EP Paralyzer’s chutzpa is never called into question.

As for the not-so-great, the thin production is not so much off-putting as it is reminiscent of the aforementioned past era, so that’s either hit or miss depending on your tastes. The music is pretty solid overall, and the vocals are okay, but the high-pitch effort in “Citizens Dissent” was a bit of a shoulder-cruncher. Lyrically the songs are decent, nothing amazing or really thought-provoking. For a first real effort it’s certainly not terrible, but there is certainly some work to be done before writing them off or claiming them to be the next Exodus.

I’d be anxious to hear a few more tracks from the guys down the line as I think they have some chops to hone and bugs to work out. They have the right attitude and influences; now just fine-tune the songs and devices and I’ll bet it gets better. 
Lucidity - Relic
Release Date:  May 2nd, 2009
Band Self Released

TRACK LISTING:
1.  Defiant  2.  My Demise  3.  Relic
-    Total playing time: 18:13
Finland’s represented again in the metal arena with an outfit called Lucidity. Relic is the band’s fourth demo and it’s a very good one to boot. There’s a lot happening in just three songs.

The three-song demo is a strong effort by a talented group of guys that combine the best elements of death metal with a melodic twist. While I would reluctantly call this ‘melodic death’ simply due to the myriad of elements herein it is just under twenty-minutes of very good metal music. It not only offers a heavy, unrelenting feel to the music (“Defiant”) but also slows down in moments of, no pun intended, lucidity only to create this grand architecture of sound (“My Demise”). These guys have a nice sound that borders on the psychedelic, especially evident in the title track. Whole there is no Nactmystium or modern Enslaved-like psychedelic transition here, there is some very interesting music offered within Relic.

These guys should get some label attention down the road. Check these guys out for yourselves and see if you too aren’t happily entertained and subdued.        
DOWNLOAD Relic and two other demos FREE from the band's
official website: http://www.lucidityband.net/
Release Date:  June 6th, 2010
Band Self Released

TRACK LISTING:
1.  Song 4  2.  Song 1  3.  Song 6  4.  Song 5  5.  Song 2
-    Total playing time: 29:09
DOWNLOAD Demo 2010 FREE from the band's band camp page: http://aequorea.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2010
DOWNLOAD Paralyzing Thrash Attack FREE from the band's myspace page.  (click on link above)
Schwarzwald - Demo I
Release Date:  June 9, 2010
Band Self Released

TRACK LISTING:
1.  End of Summer (Intro)  2.  The Storm  3.  Abysmal Winds 
4.  The Birth of Winter (Outro)          -    Total playing time:  18:57
This one-man black metal project out of New York is something that sincerely puzzles me. The tags tell me that it’s supposed to be ambient black metal, but I’m not hearing much of either to be honest. What I’m hearing is a bad attempt at sinister vocals that come across as cheesy as Mister Doctor from Italy’s Devil Doll, yet not nearly as talented.

This effort truly befuddles and angers me that I had to waste twenty minutes of my life reviewing this trite, comical mess. I was producing better metal restringing my Rickenbacker bass; I’m really hesitant to urinate on anyone’s efforts as a musician, but this is hardly a prime example of my self-imposed sympathies. The production on this is back-alley garbage, plain and simple. The music is fifth-rate basement crap that isn’t taken seriously by me, nor should it be by anyone that takes their music even remotely seriously. The only decently credible part of this unmitigated nonsense is the intro and outro, which were no doubt done on a Casio keyboard from Guitar Center in the discounted section. Hey man, the walking through forest sounds over keyboards has been done to death already.

To be even more honest, this “demo” makes NME’s Unholy Death sound like Antonio Vivaldi or Edvard Grieg. The absolute disregard for structure and effort just plain angers me. I sincerely hope “Avgrunn”, the band’s main “player” has a good day job. As a musician this offends everything I’ve ever heard or recorded myself. The cool cover photo gives this half a star, hence fulfilling my charity case for the week!        
DOWNLOAD Demo I FREE from the band's bandcamp page:  http://schwarzwald.bandcamp.com/
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