Demo MMXIX

What in the world did I justen listen to? Civerous' Demo MMXIX is a rollercoaster ride; the diversity of this demo, clocking in under 20 minutes, is truly impressive, albeit in need of some polish.

Civerous bill themselves as "black/death" or "blackened death metal" - and fairly so. In fact, it doesn't go far enough. The demo explores not just black and death, but doom and even hints of thrash as well. And you know what? All of it is done well. The demo begins with droning yet crunchy guitars and slow drums, starting things off with a doom vibe that reappears throughout the demo. Black metal like tremolo slowly joins in along with the vocals before everything explodes into a fast combination of black and death.

Demo MMXIX continues shifting between these styles, one moment melancholy black metal, another headbang-inspiring death metal, and sometimes slowing things down in a doom-like ambience. Hell, the final track even starts off with a riff that sounds like it could have come from an Amon Amarth song. The band's diverse musical abilities are on clear display here.

However, more of a transition or song identity would go a long way in pushing the demo to the next level. Sometimes slow melancholy tremolo gives way to abrupt bursts of thrashing that leave you wondering whether you're still listening to the same song. But to be fair, the occasional incoherent sounding shifts may be due to the time constraints of a demo rather than songwriting ability.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of the demo is the vocals. They are deep and guttural where words are completely incoherent. That's certainly not uncommon in metal, but are not well done here as there is virtually no variety and often feel inappropriate for the music. It's like you could have recorded 3 seconds of the vocalist and then copy and pasted it across the demo. On top of that, the vocals are loud. So, not only do you have repetitive vocals that don't feel fitting, they also drown out the far more interesting sounding instruments. The only exception is on the third track which has better sounding black metal growls, but these are inversely turned down too low. (And it appears these may have been provided by a guest musician.)

This interesting and diverse demo could appeal to a variety of metal listeners, as the band is clearly capable of playing many genres. If Civerous can figure out how to more seamlessly weave these elements together and adjust their vocals (or at the very least turn them down), there's definitely some exciting metal ahead.