Northland - Śmierć to nienawiść demo 1995

Northland - Śmierć to nienawiść demo 1995
1) Światowit
2) Stormwind
3) Mokradła Swarożyca
4) Złoty koń Czernoboha

RGhost / Yandex

The Coven's Baltic Sea tour moves further south and a bit west too as today is Poland's turn. Well, actually there would be that bit of Russia with Kaliningrad but since we already did Russia it's fair to skip ahead a bit. Here is another contribution, a nameless benefactor sent me some items burned on a disc and this was among them, one of the three '95 demos of Northland. I think someone was looking for these the other year and one ("Nadchodzące zło") can already be found online so that leaves two missing, unless there are some unreleased/super-limited things out there. No cover, I used the rather charming image of Nahald found on Metal Archives. He probably enjoyed Salvatore's early books. Speaking of Metal Archives, the Northland entry claims the band changed to synth project later but this is already fully ambient material.

Pretty short demo as three of the four songs are in "intro-lengths" with durations ranging from 01:06 to 02:07. The first track has a rather neoclassical feel to it while second one sounds wonderfully casiolike and has that old game soundtrack/dungeon synth-vibe. Third one is middle ground for the first two, quite solemn though that feeling is a bit ruined by the background (I guess?) noise at 01:33 or so, sounds like a car alarm or really cheesy UFO sound effect kicking in. Fortunately it is fleeting and not very loud but still a little jarring. The last, longest song is another solemn piece, I think I hear some Burzum-influence there which is not a problem in the slightest. Enjoyable demo and I certainly want to hear at least the other non-metal demo. At least in small doses synth-Northland is vastly better than metal-Northland. Recommended, even if you hated "Czernoboh" (most reviewers did, back in the day).