Deathwish Overload

It's not far fetched to say that with the recent old-school death revival, even a band like Coldway could have found some success. Their third and last demo 'Deathwish Overload' is far from the style's best but had they released it two or three years later, who knows where they'd be now. Worse music than this is currently being released by the numbers.

The two tracks on offer are somewhat different from each other. Opening title track is a fast-ish assault similar to, say, Obituary or early Gorefest, only with weaker riffs and thus, not nearly as enjoyable as its influences. 'Stains on the Wall', on the other hand, is a simpler, slower effort where the guitars attempt some semi-interesting chord arpeggio patterns before the track lapses into blatant Gothenburg worship for the last minute or so. The band works together decently – as they should at this point in their career – and none of the musicians are bad at their job. The vocalist, for his part, is apparently trying to imitate John Tardy and Martin van Drunen and isn't doing it too well.

Regardless of the vocals, the main problem here is the riffs. While some are ok and one or two even good, the majority of the guitar work is quite unimaginative and feels like the guys are only jamming, strumming on whichever power chords their fingers happen to land on. Add to this some very simple song structures, and the demo does leave much to be desired musically. The production is pretty good for a 2006 demo, but that's not really a redeeming quality, all things considered.

Bottom line: 'Deathwish Overload' is far from a complete trainwreck, but I'm not at all surprised about Coldway's fate. Quality as well as originality should be an absolute minimum of what is required from any band.