Satanic Doom Death

Japanese death/doom, I never thought I would find this out this late, but better late than never.

I am somewhat of a fan of Begrabnis, but I never checked out their previous incarnation. but after listening to this, I would say this is superior to the material they would later write after the name change. The material is a foreshadowing of their future material before they clean up their act and discard the filth and evil that made this demo so good.

The music here is some really good riff-centric death/doom, which I am a huge sucker for; unrelenting doomy riffs with the intensity and brutality of death metal, which makes it even harsher and more evil, like a villain that approaches you slowly, like a horror movie with no escape. The demo-quality production only makes it better, as now the extra roughness of the music is being presented with an extra layer of evil. While it is no Hatred For Mankind or Church of Misery when it comes to presenting evil in music, it is still something I really enjoyed.

For the instruments, the bad production kind of muddles all the instruments under a layer of reverb and feedback, which makes the guitars really heavy; the same is true for the drums. The clean vocals also sound super demented after being filtered by that horrible production, with the usual death growls having the same effect. Meanwhile, the bass gets buried under the amount of reverb and feedback, which I think is unintentional since this is a demo. I guess there are three constants in the universe: death, taxes, and ignored bass guitars in music.

After this demo, the band would change their name to Begrabnis and become a funeral doom metal band. While they are some solid funeral doom, the lack of filth in that sound is quite a downgrade compared to this album. I wish they would revisit this sound and realise that there is a crowd out there that enjoys stuff like this.

The rising sun flag in the background better not be anything symbolic of nationalism and racism...

Highlights: This Means War