Archives of the Dead part XV: Autumn Leaves - Hope Springs Eternal (Demo 1995)

Archives of the Dead part XV: AUTUMN LEAVES - Hope Springs Eternal (Demo 1995)

Line up: Boris Tandrup (bass), Egil H. Madsen (drums), Flemming C. Lund (guitars), Torsten Madsen (vocals), Thomas Andersen (guitars)

I’ve already written some words on this demo when reviewing Autumn Leaves’ excellent debut LP “Embraced by the Absolute”... but damn, I keep listening to “Hope Springs Eternal” and I truly think it’s simply an awesome demo, so maybe it deserves also some more words in this Archives of the Dead thing I occasionally do here; so no one will miss this killer demo… So, here it is!

And the reason why I like “Hope Springs Eternal” so much is probably the fact that this music is heavily infected and similar to the Swedish melodic death metal… and even though I am not a great fan of bands like At the Gates, Dark Tranquillity, In Flames, Eucharist, Crypt of Kerberos, etc then I must say that some of the early recordings of these bands are really good, mainly I mean their demos or 7”EPs, up to the debut albums. And Autumn Leaves sounds exactly like these early efforts of the mentioned bands. They also built their songs on quite technical riffs, with many melodic, harmonious parts in between, using many tempo changes and that characteristic harsh vocals. Of course this demo, released in 1995, came out very late, years after the debut recordings of Dark Tranquillity or At the Gates… all those bands I mentioned above already had full length albums released… so, it is very obvious that Autumn Leaves were followers of these bands, but despite that they managed to compose songs, which were just as good, as sometimes even better, than those of those Swedish bands, like for example I like this demo (and the following full length) album more than any recordings from In Flames or Dark Tranquillity. It’s just very well played and fantastically sounding demo, I think that “Hope Springs Eternal” with songs like “On the Verge of Tears” and the title track is just something fantastic. Oh, and also “Weakening Trip”, which starts with a riff, which I am sure already appeared somewhere else, but I can’t put a name of the band now haha! Anyway, what a killer demo it is, what a fine piece of melodic death metal! 

Final rate: 85/100