Archives of the Dead part XXIV - Ilbred - Ilbred (Demo 1994)

Archives of the Dead part XXIV - Ilbred - Ilbred (Demo 1994) 

Steve Castaldi (bass), Mike Thompson (drums), Greg Giomi (guitars), Mike McGarahan (guitars), Rick Ohl (vocals) 

Oh man, what a jolly awesome demo I've recently found, when checking some You Tube channels for unknown death metal demos. Personally I love to dig through these old demo recordings. Quite often I could find pure jewels and bands no one fuckin knows or hardly remembers, and it's a killer feeling and fun to listen to their ancient recordings. Such as in this case... The band is called Ilbred and they were from Chicago, Illinois, USA. They were formed pretty early, in 1989, but the first and only demo of Ilbred was recorded in 1994. According to the bio, which I managed to find, in the beginning band was heavily influenced by thrash bands like Death Angel, Nuclear Assault, Metallica, Megadeth, Voivod and Slayer. Demo 1994 is pure death metal though. These three songs are superb example for the classic US death metal style, alike to bands like Baphomet, Gutted, Morta Skuld, Bodybag (Portland), Contagion (also from Chicago area) and so on. Even though this is just a demo and there are only three tracks, it's enough to convince me that Ilbred were more than just your boring and average death metal band of the mid 90's era. I have to say that not only the demo has pretty decent production, but the songwriting is solid for this style of death metal. And the songs fuckin kill. Ilbred had some awesome riffs, especially in song titled "Betrayer" - very brutal, but kind of groovy also (sooo similar to Baphomet / Banished!). Rick Ohl's vocals also sounded damn awesome, technically the music has been played very well (I like how the bass sounds here), so basically everything about "Ilbred" demo is top notch for me. It's been a pure pleasure to listen to it... and damn, I was playing these three tracks for insane amount of times recently. 

I definitely think that Ilbred belonged to those interesting acts, which should have got more attention. Sadly in 1995 Rick Ohl, original Ilbred vocalist, died, killed in car accident. That stopped band's activity for a while. Later on Ilbred reformed with new line up and even managed to record a full length album "Unearthly Sufferance" in 1997 (you can listen to it on bandcamp, https://ilbred.bandcamp.com/releases). The band gained a lot of exposure at this time but in the end of it all interests were fading in a couple of the members and the band finally called it a day. But damn, we can see so many old demos and albums re-released recently. I do hope that there will be some labels, which will find Ilbred as interesting enough and bring their album and demo to proper CD format. I want to have it in my collection!!! 

Standout track: "Betrayer" 

Final rate: 80/100