ASCENDED DEAD - Ascended Dead (Self released demo MC 2012)
I don’t know about you, but personally I love
to chase new bands within my favourite metal subgenres – black, death, whatever
metal – it is always damn cool to get something new, fresh and killer… and it
doesn’t even have to be original or perfectly recorded, as long as there’s the
feeling and great, memorable riffs and atmosphere. Here is such demo, which
from the very first listen caught my attention and well, it actually became one
of my favourite demo releases of the recent months. The band is called Ascended
Dead and hails from San Diego, California and features four, it seems, very
young Americans who decided to fuel their hatred with some old school death
metal sounds. And man, they do fuckin shred! I mean, when I listen to this
debut demo cassette it feels like I got a demo from the early 90’s, from some
legendary acts, as the vibe, the feeling and the quality of Ascended Dead demo
is very similar. I am very impressed, especially if you think that those guys
weren’t even born yet, when “Left Hand Path” was released! Ha!
Although the band is American, their music is
more European sounding rather than American. Of corpse I can hear also many
influences from the early Death, Sadistic Intent and even the demo era Morbid
Angel and Slayer’s “Show No Mercy”, but more there can be found the traces of
the likes of Treblinka, Nihilist, demo era Dismember, early Merciless and also
early Asphyx. So, quite impressive list of bands, don’t you think? The band
definitely sounds old and archaic, but I must say that I really like the
production of this demo. It is quite raw, but everything is well audible and in
many ways it reminds me the recordings of bands like Repugnant, Degial and
Invidious. Or maybe also Tribulation, especially if the Swedes has a demo
titled “The Ascending Dead”? Well, definitely there’s similar atmosphere in the
music of Ascended Dead and each of their fours tracks is truly great and if you
like the old and new bands, which I just mentioned, then get this demo right
now! There may still be something to improve on the next recording – like I’m
not really impressed by the guitar leads, but from the other hand this sort of
music doesn’t really require perfect technical skills and 100% top notch
production. It can even sound chaotic at few fragments, but who cares as it is
a demo, and Ascended Dead did good job here. My favourite track would probably
be “Caustic Decay” – it is really violent and one of the main riffs reminds me
Cadaver’s “Decomposed Metal Skin” hehe.
Final rate: 80/100
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