Fire Storm

The Fire Storm Unanimated demo came in a quite revolutionary period. The death metal was reigning supreme in Europe but the very first black metal bands were arising, taking the influences from the pioneers of this genre, Bathory among the others. The darkness and the pure sense of horror that lie on this demo are the direct consequence of those influences. Starting from the scary, gloom intro made of weird vocals, we can understand what this demo is about.

The first track welcomes us through lots of fast tempo parts and blast beats, to turn into something more ritualistic and doom. Here the influences come also from the new death/doom genre and the vocals follow the growl tonality. The use of some keyboards parts increase a sense of occultism in this demo and the low-budget production contributes in this too. We cannot find the melodic death metal influences and the guitars are just a way between the new born black sound and the death ones. The riffs are on tremolo picking during the faster parts to settle down on simple palm muting with dark lines for the doom sectors.

“The Blackness of a Fallen Star” shows some more melodies on the solos but the rest is again death/black with doom parts. The vocals are suffered and totally blackened thanks also to a good variation from growls to screams. Despite the quite poor production, everything is quite audible and the main role is for the vocals parts. “Storms From the Skies of Grief” is damn gloom for that arpeggio by the beginning and also the other parts are not shining for happiness. The atmosphere is dark with more, melancholic and almost “depressive” melodies! This is the song where the main death/doom melodies put their head out. They are from the guitars when the drums are always slow.

“In the Forest of the Dreaming Dead” starts with the sounds of the pouring rain to follow again the slow paces. The lead lines are evocative, cold and with a hint of epic inside. As we go on, the song increases in speed but the best is for the breaks where the keyboards are present as well, with their cold sound. The fast parts are the most “black metal” oriented ones with some fast, a bit chaotic solos. The best parts are absolutely the mid-paced ones because they let emerge a better sense of songwriting with good melodies. The best track here is “Storms From the Skies of Grief”, that is a real small jewel. The rest is not bad at all but not so original yet.