UMUR
"Chaos Preferred" is the 2nd demo by Norwegian black metal act 1349. The demo was self-released in August 1999.
Being a demo the sound quality is not exactly of professional quality but there´s a certain charm to the garage sound. It´s especially the drums that often drown and sound muffled, while the guitars and the bass actually sound pretty good and distinguishable from each other in the soundscape. The raspy vocals are a bit low but that´s pretty typical for black metal. The 4 tracks on the 19:32 minutes long demo are well written and actually quite catchy considering the raw nature of the music. It´s not the most raw black metal I´ve ever heard but it´s definitely not in the polished end of the spectrum either. 1349 succeed because they are able to vary their songwriting and their songs between blasting parts and more moderately paced parts and because they bring in just enough melody for the songs to stand out without sacrificing their generally savage approach. There´s even a epic edge to some of the sections albeit of the more dark and evil kind.
If it wasn´t for the pretty lo-fi sound quality, "Chaos Preferred" would have been a pretty great demo, because the quality of the material is obviously very high. I guess a 2.5 star rating is warranted.