keskiviikko 10. syyskuuta 2014

Into Desolation - The Land of Eternal Winter demo 1996


Into Desolation - The Land of Eternal Winter demo 1996
1) The Return of the King
2) Keeper of Secrets
3) Dusk
4) The Land of Eternal Winter

Zippy / Mediafire

I seem to have caught a cold but such minor issues must not be an obstacle, the contributions need to keep rolling. Right, let's go to Swedish shores again today, black metal from Into Desolation who were a two man band featuring Dusk and Necromorbus. Yeah, that guy. With the studio. Sent by brother Grindfreak the other month, his rip includes a cover scan. Thanks again!

Despite opening with a track called "The Return of the King" these guys aren't playing Tolkien-influenced stuff. Not that I'd really know since lyrics aren't included. Well, whatever, the opening track is also the longest, over eight minutes and features vocal performances by both musicians. Sound is quite raw but very audible and at least I find it enjoyable. Overall pretty typical Swedish early-mid 90's sound to be honest but works for me. Their vocals are black metal screams in pretty usual vein but delivered with enthusiasm and pretty well, spiced by roars by one and more shrill shrieks by the other guy. Music is quite melodic and while not exactly very innovative or original it is well enough executed and seems to work better when the listener is not at 100% as I notice myself digging it now much more than previous time I put it on. Obligatory name-dropping, this brought to my mind stuff like the Setherial '94 demo, Belsemar demos and I think I like this and will recommend it. Now I need a nap and you need to download this.

3 kommenttia:

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

Just a suggestion: you should have a "short" tag, like a tag for all releases under, say, 10 or 15 minutes. Better yet, how about a "short tracks" tag, tagging albums with a rough average of maybe 3 minutes or less? I get that a lot of these demos will be under a half hour already, but I groan every time I see "eight minute opening track" in the description.

Velkaarn kirjoitti...

Hmm, there's potential to the suggestion. Perhaps I'll need to think about it. Or I could just add the durations to the tracklistings in the first place. You dislike long songs?

Anonyymi kirjoitti...

Generally, no.
It's more about what goes ON in those minutes, if anything.
The intro track of this demo actually surprised me: very nice black metal, fast, heavy, lots of variety doesn't linger on any particular moment for too long. In short, it USES those minutes.
But for every demo like this, there's at least thirty, forty, fifty others that pad out the runtime with long and uninteresting ambient intros/outros, or otherwise attempt to build up an atmosphere and fail miserably.
And not that building an atmosphere isn't important, just that it's not that easy to pull off.
Somewhere along the line, metal became plagued with filler: horror movie samples, guitar noodling passages, acoustic or ambient interludes, etc.
Again, some of these things can be great if done well, but there's unfortunately more crap out there than gold.