Thrusting Plagues

Here we have Blood Drift, a death metal band based out of Belgium. The sound these guys play is pseudo-technical death-y grind metal. A lot like much of the newer tech-metal bands coming out these days, albeit with a distinctly European sound.

While for a demo this is not bad, it is pretty generic death metal by all accounts. There are a few moments when the band creates some awesome guitar melodies and the drummer is fantastic, but I cannot help but feel the whole thing is overly generic. The vocals are a bit forced and contrived sounding. Much like someone who listens to Suffocation once after listening to a lifetime of Avril Lavigne and thinks they know what death vocals are 'all about'.

Between the sad vocal execution and shoddy production, this demo goes down in flames. The guitar tone kind of reminds me of a lo-fi version of the trademark 'rusty chainsaw' tone established by Dismember, but sounds more accidental than intentional. If the production was cleaner, the drummer would stand out a lot more as well. His performance is kind of the saving grace of the demo, you can hear he is amazing, but is so buried by bad production and fake death groans that even he cannot save the demo.

I hear these guys have a new album in the works. I will definitely be checking it out once it is available and really hope they can mature all-around, otherwise there is no point to listen to another pseudo-tech death band, there are a million of them that play this style better than Blood Drift.