Ruined

On the second demo, this great but unknown band buried in music history started changing a bit. It's amazing to see how many styles they seem to have put together. Imagine some NYDM riffs meeting a bit of Cynic and Atheist with a skilled guitarist, a singer who incarnates John Tardy, Phil Anselmo, Chuck Schuldiner, and God knows who else, and is able to use a particular rap-like vocal pattern or the classical death metal grunts.

I think this release marks another point of evolution of death metal and metal at that time. This band took what all the previous extreme bands had done and pushed it further with personality - mid-pace, blast beats, shredding, clean parts, almost breakdowns, more groove-oriented parts (in fact, on this demo you can hear something that anticipates Slipknot's choice of music, but here it's metal for sure), and an almost present old school sound.

On this release bass in audible, but it doesn't stand out so it's almost non-existent. The better things of this demo are the guitars and vocals and still I don't understand how such an outstanding band has disappeared.

What an excellent and quite unknown band here. I've never heard a mention of this band from anyone and I'm very surprised considering the originality and quality of this demo release.

The first thing that catches your ear is the crazy, spazzed-out vocals, a totally unique approach hard to compare to anyone else. Definitely not boring or one-sided at all. I guess maybe the sound of the vocals are similar to John Tardy of Obituary a bit, but sometimes the guy just goes crazy and spits out these crazy fast vocal patterns that just sound insane! It's very fitting to the music and works perfectly.

What about the music you ask?!?! Well, for this coming out in 1992 I have to say it's far ahead of its time. It may seem like a fairly standard early '90s death metal affair, but out of nowhere they'll hit you with these sick, slow moshing riffs that just make you wanna break things. There's plenty of varied tempos here, though, so don't take it as a "mosh"-oriented band. You'll also find some finely executed solos which I was surprised at. The level of musicianship here is great! It's really hard to compare this to another band, but imagine, say, the bastard child of Human Remains, but less experimental and more death metal-oriented (not that HR weren't).

This only contains 3 songs and just as I'm about to destroy everything, the demo is over, which is good for my furniture's sake!! But that's the reason I didn't give this a perfect rating. Could have been longer...a hell of a lot longer! Damn, this leaves you wanting more!
This definitely isn't some shitty 4 track poor excuse for a release and has pro-duplication and production.

How this demo is virtually unknown while complete garbage demos are revered is totally beyond me! That's the way of the metal world, I guess. Cross Fade, where are you?!?!