Realms of Reverie

In early 2006 I was at some small metal concert in my local town, I didn't have a clue of how any of the band sounded or anything but I went there in lack of other things to do. There were some pretty mediocre bands that played and there was Havok. Despite the pretty worthless sound quality at the concert I was taken by shock how good such a small band could be. I tried to find a demo or something with them on the net and came up empty, because apparently they had never even released one. So for a few months a went without hearing squat about the band until a friend approached me and said they had finally gotten the time to record something and he managed to get me a copy.


I was not disappointed. It all starts off with some mighty fine, grinding, semi-technical death metal, and some really good vocals actually. Since it's a three song demo, there's not really much to say about it. The songs are pretty much in the same style, yet completely different, and it promises a lot for this band's future. The guitar work performed by Miguel and Mahan is nothing short of kick-ass, they show great technical skills along with a wonderful feeling when it comes to writing catchy riffs.
One thing I find very enjoyable on this demo is the production. It's not the extremely harsh and raw sound which you can find on many demos, and which I think would've destroyed this music a lot. Thanks to this, you can actually hear the bass, something I'm not sorry for. There are some great basslines which does the work it should, functioning as a bridge between the guitars and drums. Speaking about drums, the drumming is rock solid. Kroke provides good and tight blasting where it should be and proves he's got a great feeling for fills and similar things. Vocals, not much to be said actually since Johan provides quality growls and he is a great medium for the excellent lyrics, check them out. Actually, it came to a shock to me when I found out that it was Kroke, the drummer who had written the lyrics, I mean, a drummer?


Overall it's a really promising debut from a band I will continue to follow until the day they stop playing. Which hopefully will be in a long, long time.