UMUR The aptly titled "Demo" is the first demo recording by US, Buffalo, New York based thrash/death metal act Malevolent Creation. The demo was released in 1987 and was originally released on a single-sided cassette tape.

The demo features three tracks and a total playing time of 8:35 minutes. Stylistically Malevolent Creation pretty much found their signature brutal thrash/death metal style right away, alhough lead vocalist Brett Hoffmann has a more thrashy raw delivery than a death metal growling style. So this is not death metal, but rather an aggressive and brutal take on thrash metal. "Sacrificial Annihilation" pretty much sounds like it would on the band´s 1991 debut full-length studio album "The Ten Commandments", although more unpolished and less brutal. But the ideas and the structures are there.

The two other tracks on the demo are "The Traitor Must Pay" and "Confirmed Kill". None of them were included on subsequent album releases in the form they are presented here, but the former features some of the riffs and structure of what would become "Remnants of Withered Decay" (from "The Ten Commandments"). "Confirmed Kill" would be re-recorded and included on Malevolent Creation´s 2000 seventh full-length studio album "Envenomed" (well actually not on the original version of the album, the track is only available on the reissue of the album, which is titled "Envenomed II"), but sounds quite different from the almost crossover thrash metal sounding demo version.

The sound quality is decent, although a bit on the thin trembly side. Some reissues of "The Ten Commandments" feature the three tracks from this demo as bonus material, but those are remixed versions, which sound much heavier and well produced. The original demo did not sound like the remixed versions. Overall it´s a good quality first demo by Malevolent Creation, and already this early on, it was obvious that these guys had something great going on. A 3 star (60%) rating is warranted.