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XIV Dark Centuries > Dunkle Jahrhunderte > Reviews
XIV Dark Centuries - Dunkle Jahrhunderte

Dunkle YAWNhunderte - 25%

JCurwen, August 8th, 2006

I received this with only a booklet and no tray inlay, so I’m assuming that it is a nicely printed demo .. or that I got gypped out of my inlay :^(. The booklet says it is a product of Moonrise Underground Productions, but that could just be XIV Dark Centuries’ “label.” Anyway, the heathen metal on display here is of a mid-paced, non-threatening variety. The vocals are blackish and doubled, one taking a lower death metal register and the other taking a mid-range black metal rasp. So, the vocals are rather tame, hackneyed and make no impression. The riffing is slightly melodic heavy metal with no drive – never does one feel the urge to bang his or her head or throw horns or whatever one might do when one is inspired to movement by metal. Not until the 6th song do I really get any indication, riff-wise, of this having heathen / traditional European leanings – when there is some actual folky / heathen melodies used. There are synths that are used, seemingly, to fill out certain sections, but the tone chosen is so limp that it adds nothing and truly only serves to make the song sound cheesy. I can almost get into the last song because XIV uses a semi-interesting chord progression and some epic parts with ..surprise .. a guitar solo, which fits somehow, but they throw that synth in there playing a simple and bad riff with that cheesy sound and it ruins everything. Some positives are that, for a demo (or whatever), it is recorded very well and everyone seems to have some minor skills with their instruments, as the playing is not sloppy. But, apart from the last song, this is just boring. There’s even a spoken word part (track 8) - RARELY do spoken word parts have a place in songs, and they have no place in this otherwise decent, clean, atmospheric song intro. Overall, a decent try, but with little success.