ΑIPEΣIΣ

What I have in front of me right now is the Airesis (Aipesis?) demo by a greek black metal band called Merciless Crucifixion. It was pretty much a blind purchase from my side, but now in retrospect I’m not at all sad I bought it, since it’s generally quite a nice raw black metal demo, even if it has a few smaller flaws.

This band goes for the common approach of ditching the melodic aspects of black metal and just going for an all out audial assault. The instrumentation brings to mind such bands as Sarcófago, Blasphemy and early Black Witchery. By that comparison, you will know what to expect from this demo. You can expect a slab of raw black metal with some thrashier parts thrown in for good measure. This demo won’t fail to live up to these expectations, and it does it quite well.

The production is quite raw, but not nearly as raw as some releases in the genre, and you can always quite clearly hear what’s going on here. The guitarwork pretty much follows the blast beats most of the time with various tremolo-picked riffs, but also goes to do some thrashy sections (which works good to create variation) and even a bunch of solos scattered throughout. The riffs manage to be quite varied and to grab your attention quite well, while still maintaining a coherency throughout the demo, mixing straight forward old school black metal with some thrash influences. This is very good, since much of the raw black metal that exists today is so god damn monotonous that it bores you to death after the first two minutes. The bass is, like a lot of times in this genre, not worth mentioning as it doesn’t make its presence known in any way whatsoever. The vocals are of the type you usually hear in various black/thrash bands, and is probably the element most reminiscent of Sarcófago, with a raspy growl rather than a screechy one. It is done quite well and suits the music. The drumming is surprisingly varied. Even if most of it is blasting, they throw in some different parts for variation (drum fills, variations of the beats and some slower passages), and you don’t get bored with it. It’s all just a brutal, warlike assault of the senses done in a very good and professional faschion.

The demo is also littered with various samples. Some of the samples are fitting and used nicely, but some of them (particularily the battlefield sounds at the beginning of A Black Legacy Of Hate) sound like the demo’s overall quality would have improved if they were dropped. It also starts with this eerie intro, which perhaps is a bit longer than it should be, but still works nicely as an introduction to the first track. Most of the little nitpicking flaws on this demo (what keeps it from being really, really good) are just stuff that you think it would have been better if it was dropped altogether (ideas that didn’t really work out). Most of this concern the samples, and some short passages in some of the songs (particularily one in the beginning of the first song, where the instruments stop playing, and the singer just growls something). There aren’t any really major flaws with this demo (only small ones), and overall I’d say Merciless Crucifixion did quite a nice job with this demo.