Daymares

Day-dreaming can sometimes produce some really positive results, I tell you, as is the case with our friends here who detonated the underground with their vociferous, albeit occasionally stylish death/grind outrages on a string of demos in the early/mid-90’s before deciding to give those day-dreams a more wholesome shape with the album reviewed here.

This opus is a big step forward for the band into finely crafted semi-technical death metal, a tasty compendium of Pestilence’s “Consuming Impulse” and Death’s “Spiritual Healing”, with vociferous shouty Martin Van Drunen-like vocals guiding the show which starts quite dynamically with the brisk fast-pacers “Time Can See Everything” and the brilliant “Testimony of the Ancients” qualifier “Escape to Nowhere” those two raising the adrenaline level high at the beginning, also creating the impression that this could be a headbanging fest… and this is pretty much the case the delivery occasionally descending to heavy meandering, but never inordinately complex riff-patterns as evident from the brooding “People of Three Faces” although the ride remains unusually lively and energetic (“Impossibility of Conversion”, the “Spiritual Healing” leftover “Impossibility of Conversion”), with dark and moody (“Strands of the Past”) overtones timidly trying to impose their somber understanding of the death metal canons, before the arrival of two outstanding more technical showdowns “The Call from Elsewhere” and “Silent Pain” this last cut a wonderful progressively-laid out shredder with sudden lyrical digressions working against the elaborately brutal main frame.

Regardless of the high level of musicianship on display, the whole package had the feel of a rehearsal for something grander and more ambitious, like the guys were testing the soil before embarking on a more exuberantly intricate journey sparkles of which were all over the effort here. Well, those lofty visions never materialized as the band reverted back to the old more pristine death/grindcore blend on the next two instalments, both bashing, relatively simplistic affairs which must have found their audience in the early-00’s as there were no any unforgivable defects on them, truth be told.

It’s just that technical, or at least semi-technical death metal are distant memories on those, the re-release of the early demos in 2012 not helping the audience much in achieving the intended total recall regarding the album reviewed here. The state of day-dreaming would do the trick, I’ve heard some people say… there have never been elaborate death wishes crushed during such sleep-inducing musings.