Time Signature Breaking the ice...

Genre: blackened death metal

Straight out of the Canadian underground, this mysterious blackened death metal band are set to release their eponymous demo via Iron Bonehead Productions in February.

'Omen' is an explosive tremolo-picked black-death track to begin with, but changes into a heavier, riff-driven affair. 'Roots' starts out with a slow old school doom-laden intro, morphing into a black-death affair with the same guitar figure as in the intro but now tremolo-picked. Eventually, the song shifts into a heavier triplet metal song. 'Gateway' explodes right into a tremolo-picked black metal affair and then breaks down into a thrashy Slayer-inspired section, followed by a series of old school death metal passages. 'Prophecy' is a thrasher which starts out fast and then changes into a heavy, probably Slayer-inspired affair, also offering some atmospheric and mildly dissonant passages.

Seeing that this is a cassette release which - I think - deliberately aims at an early 1990s extreme metal feel, the production is far from polished, and the drums are probably a bit to low in the mix for some people. However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the music on this release. All four tracks combine primitive riffage with relatively complex song structures. As hinted at above, there is a blatant Slayer influence on this release, but that's just cool I think. The performance is perhaps not always super tight, but that is part of the package with this type of release, and I think that most fans of underground extreme metal will appreciate it. To be frank, I was positively surprised when I listened to it.

Fans of blackened death-thrash should definitely check this release out.