El-Ahrairah

On their second demo, El-Ahrairah crafted an excellent, strangely beautiful mixture of black metal and noise. This style is present and well executed on this, their first demo, as well.

The same elements present in later releases are still seen here, except for a few small differences. First, the harsh noise influence is less pronounced than on The Blessing. The other main difference is the clean sections that are present on this release, and this is in no way a bad thing. The melodic sections are beautiful and sad, but provide nice interludes between blasting black metal sections.

The majority of this release is made up of El-Ahrairah’s harsher brand of atmospheric black metal. Fuzzy, hypnotic guitars wash over blast beats, while the vocalist delivers lyrics in a powerful howling fashion. Sometimes a lead guitar part will come in playing a very simple pattern along with the tremolo picking. Overall, the music creates an atmosphere of both sadness and power.

I would highly recommend this tape, as well as other releases from El-Ahrairah, as the band writes consistently powerful black metal that can be listened to over and over again.