Archives of the Dead part XXXV - Abiosis - Abiosis (Demo 1992)

Archives of the Dead part XXXV - Abiosis - Abiosis (Demo 1992))

Line up: Cisco Alcazar (bass), Lincoln Lucas (drums), Curtis Gray (guitars), Dan Nicholson (vocals, guitars)

Recorded at Power Supply Studios in Napa, California on February 15-16, 1992.
Produced by Abiosis.

Now I wanna write few words about one of my favourite demos from the early 90's era of US death metal scene. This is Abiosis (California) with their debut, self-titled release from 1992. I actually found out about it only few years ago, but once I gave it a chance, I ended up played it many, many times, because it is such a great demo recording, better than many more known stuff from that old era. 

"Abiosis" contains three songs of straight forward, old school death metal. It sometimes sounds a lot like Massacre or Death’s "Leprosy" (especially in "Charred Remains"), but obviously not only these two particular bands can come to your mind when you listen to this demo. Vocals for example remind me David Vincent a lot - which is again really awesome, because Vincent used to be the best growler in the whole death metal scene. What's interesting about these three tracks is that they're quite lengthy, circling around 5-6 minutes each, which definitely was uncommon, especially for a demo band. But Abiosis had enough ideas for arrangements and killer riffs to use this time the best way possible. There's a lot of variety, tempo changes, different type of riffs, even a bit of groove, so it's not just brutal unstoppable onslaught. And every song is delivering goods, take such "Biolytic Plague" and tell me if it isn't a fuckin reaper. It is! I need to say also that the production is much better than you would normally expect to hear on a death metal demo from 1992. It really sounds well enough even for a full length effort, so that’s another aspect why I like this recording so much. It's even better than the second Abiosis demo “The Killing”.

Sadly Abiosis was active for only few years, in 1994 it was all over. They had two demos released only, so it is a real shame that they didn't go anywhere further with their music. I would love to hear more, see these demos on black wax for instance. But it's the same story as with many other killer bands from that old era, like Bodybag, Ilbred, Contagion, Haunted, Damonacy, Desolate and many, many more. They provided some killer death metal tunes, definitely deserved to get signed, do an album maybe... but for some reasons nothing happened. A lot of these demos get a bit more recognition nowadays, which is very cool, I think. Abiosis demos were even released on CD (by Dark Blasphemies Rec), which is even cooler. So, check it on YT or buy the CD and just listen to killer old school death metal.

Verdict: 85/100