Black Mass of Absu - Demo (1995)

This is an interesting demo. It's described as "Atmospheric Black/Doom Metal", but it reminds me most of Portal's Seepia and Outre, which I've seen described as "Lovecraftian horror". I think that's about right. They don't really have guitar riffs, just a twisted jumble of guitars, drums, and screamed/growled vocals. BMoA are doing much the same thing, but include keyboards in their sound and are somewhat more coherent. Oh, and they did it eight years earlier. Obviously, the playing here isn't really an issue -- this is all about aesthetic and atmosphere. And the demo-style production really helps produce an evil sounding atmosphere. Although this isn't really the kind of thing I usually like, I did enjoy listening to it, though at almost 50 minutes, it is about 20 minutes too long.

The band is probably broken up by now, but you can find one of the songs from this demo ("Strangled By the Tail of Lucifer") at a MySpace fan page.

Distemper - Pure Ugliness (1990)

Distemper hailed from Atlanta, GA and played a pretty standard blend of metal mixed with hardcore, reminding me a lot of Nuclear Assault (especially in the vocal department). There's not a lot to say about this -- it's pretty generic and standard and the production is what you'd expect from a demo. Given that this was released in 1990, it's a little dated even for the time and doesn't offer much for metal fans today.

You can check out four of the five songs here on their MySpace page.

Cornucopia of Death - Demo (1990) and Nip It in the Bud (1991)

This is an interesting pair of demos. There are a number of really terrible aspects to them, and yet they have a few good qualities as well. First, the bad. The lyrics are probably the worst aspect. They're embarrassingly juvenile, featuring song titles like "Enema Nurse" (which the singer mispronounces as "emena") and "Suck My Floppy Disk", and references to "doo-doo" and "pee-pee". The singer is equally bad; his style is more talking than singing. And the guitar solos are terrible -- seemingly just scales as fast as the guitarists can play them mixed with blues licks. Most of the music is pretty standard thrash for the time: simple and repetitive, which constrasts oddly with the more punk style of the singer, lyrics, and guitar solos. And then, just when you have it pegged as worthless, the guitarists throw out some novel riffs with progressive touches and harmonized guitar parts. If they could concentrate on these parts and make a serious demo, it would have been pretty good, though not exceptional for 1991.

Nip It in the Bud is the better demo as the playing has improved and it seems a little more serious, though the production is a little rougher and too trebly. I'd like to know what the two guitarists (Joe Smith and Scott McEllhiney) went on to do. It wouldn't surprise me if they found other projects, as they weren't bad.

Longings Past - Meadows of Maseilya (1993)

Longings Past were a band from Michigan, and released a couple of full-length albums in the early 90's. This one is their first album. Their music is described as "epic heavy metal", which isn't really my style. I'm reminded of Fates Warning's No Exit, but they never really go in a progressive direction, instead preferring instead to keep the music simple and light. This places a lot of focus on the vocalist, which unfortunately isn't a good decision as he isn't good enough to carry the album by himself. To make things worse, they try to cram too many words in each stanza, leading the vocalist to sing at almost a rap tempo, which doesn't really fit with the music at all. I suppose their might be a market for this, but I find it completely uninspired.

Artmania - stART (2007)

So this was billed as "Progressive/Gothic Metal", which piqued my interest. But I should have paid attention to their website's URL: art-band.ru. Then I probably would've figured out that by "progressive" they mean artsy-fartsy instead of what I would consider "progressive": adventurous and complex. But the base of their sound is "gothic metal", which really should be interpreted as "female-fronted metal", most similar to Nightwish. This isn't really bad per se, and fans of the style might find something to enjoy (if they aren't bothered that everything is sung in Russian). But there's nothing here that's even remotely interesting to me.

This album is freely available from their website.

Crionic - Different (1993)

This is some really good melodic/progressive thrash from the Czech Republic. At times they're pretty straightforward thrash/speed metal but they throw in a lot of melodic and progressive sections to keep it interesting. The production is excellent, with even the bass having a prominent part. The singing is of the atonal shouting style that was in vogue at the time. It's not great, but it doesn't detract that much from the music either. On the other hand, the guitar solos are a weak point -- they're not very well thought-out and are mostly blues-lick based and therefore not very appropriate for the music.

The best song is the instrumental "Irritating Inertia", but the whole thing is good. Why they heck didn't these get signed? For 1993, this would've been awesome. Heck, even now it's pretty cool. With some better guitar solos this could'a been a contender.

It's available as a free download from the band's website, along with most of the rest of their discography, which I will undoubtedly be reviewing in the future.

Enslaved (Ger) - Where is the Meaning? (1994)

This is not the same Enslaved that I reviewed three weeks ago. These guys were from Germany and played uh... well, generic mid-90's thrash/death metal. If it weren't for sharing their moniker with a much more famous band, they would probably already have been forgotten. There's not much that's remarkable about this batch of slow-to-mid-paced death metal, and I'd rate it as somewhat below average even for the time.