UMUR "Sapphire Season" is the debut full-length studio album by Danish death metal act Cyanotic. The album was released through Nordic Metal in 1996. Cyanotic was formed in 1992 and released a couple of demos before releasing "Sapphire Season", which turned out to be their sole studio album release before they disbanded. The album was produced by prolific Danish producer/musician Jacob Hansen (Invocator, Anubis Gate).

The music on "Sapphire Season" is an interesting form of melodic tinged death metal. It´s mostly slow- to mid paced (even doomy at times) with very few faster paced parts, but the really interesting thing about the music is how laid back it sounds. Of course the warm and pleasant sound production has it´s part in that, but it´s not very often I have used the phrase "laid back" about a death metal release. The music is powerful enough though and the growling vocals by Jan Rasmussen get the job done too (to my ears without being really great), it´s just that "Sapphire Season" is so pleasant to listen to. That´s what makes the album original sounding and in some ways quite unique but at the same time also what makes it slightly tedious and lacking bite. These guys have a sort of subtle manner of approaching the death metal genre and sometimes I just want to scream at them: "Unleash the Beast".

The guys in the band are obviously skilled and they are generally very well playing, and I´m sure quite a few melodic death metal fans (this is not melodeath) will find "Sapphire Season" a very interesting album. Hopefully my above comments about the music won´t read as too negative, because overall I really do enjoy the album and it´s arguably a quality release on most parameters. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Time Signature Act of metal-ution...

Genre: death metal

Cyanotic were part of what I call The 1990s Wave of Danish Death Metal, which was a movement in which the Danish underground metal scene exploded with death metal bands - and eventually imploded on itself again, because a lot of the bands sounded alike (some of the few bands to make it big time from this movement were Illdisposed and Konkhra).

Cyanotic sounded different.

Cyanotic were melodic.

And this was before the advent of Swedish melodic death metal. Cyanotics style emphasizes melody and were essentially a melodic death metal band without ever sounding like a melodeath band. They played a highly original melodic style of death metal which stood out from the rest of The 1990s Wave of Danish Death Metal. This demo tape documents their originalty - especially through the track "Eclipsed Existence".

"Eclipsed Existence" is one of the best death metal tracks I have ever heard. It is brutal and dark, but contains a lot of inherently melodic guitar riffs. And, what's more, it's also quite progressive, making use of tempo changes and unusual song structure, but without ever being overly technical. The other tracks are a bit more conventional death metal track, but both contain melodic and progressive elements. They are good tracks but they never reach the brilliancy of "Eclipsed Existence".

If you are a death metal afficionado and if you are interested in underground releases from the heyday of death metal (the early 1990s), then I'd recommend this demo tape. It's probably hard to come by, though, but the tracks are available on Cyanotic's MySpace page.