Demo 2010

It's beyond me why South America's deathcore scene goes so overlooked, if one were to investigate the genre being performed from bands coming out of countries such as Chile, Peru and Argentina, one would find some decent to even great acts such as Cerebral Slaughter, Crimena Bathory, Before the Infection, Craneotomy, Legacy of Suffering and more. Endless is one of the more buried ones. This unit hails from Argentina, and let me tell you if you're accustomed to the country's cozy beach-ridden atmosphere, it will catch you totally by surprise how pissed off and brutal these guys are.

The name of this release is Demo 2010, but if you ask me these guys should've released this as a EP and that would have done just fine. All four songs absolutely do not sound like stereotypical demo-quality recordings at all, these are VERY well written and well-produced songs that all lead into each other beautifully (or I should say, brutally). And furthermore, that cover art is just so damn, ugh, it's magnificent! For all intents and purposes, just throw out the idea in mind that this is a demo because goddamn does that notion set your standards low for what you're about to experience.

Much like many of the deathcore bands from their time, this release starts off with a sick intro track which is essentially one big breakdown to get you pumped (Carnifex, Float Face Down, I Declare War and With Blood Comes Cleansing are just a few off the top of my head that have created intro songs exactly like this). However, things don't get real until track 2; "Desired Somber". The band shows off their incredible and diverse shared influences from both brutal death metal and melodeath. The first minute of the song features Skinless and Suffocation-influenced riffing while the next verse starts to sound more like a Dark Tranquility track before swandiving into a breakdown and then morphing that breakdown into a slam. It's nuts! However, the band doesn't stop things there as the song gets into this creepy chiming riff which sounds similar to the outro to "No Pity for Coward" by Suicide Silence and then goes straight into another slam/breakdown, which surpasses the sickness the last one. The song is a GREAT track, and they chose wisely to place it as the first real song on the release.

After you listen to "Desired Somber", it becomes relatively apparent that these guys are great at writing music. Be it accidental or totally intentional (who knows), these Argentinians make great ear-catching tracks. For a music genre that was growing so stale at the time, it's actually crazy that they happened to make it sound fresh with just a couple songs.

Following on, we get track 3 titled "Overcoming" which unfortunately brings the momentum on the EP down a notch. This song is basically just one big slam riff that repeats over and over with a small riff in the middle before falling into some huge breakdowns. So yeah, the track is essentially one big breakdown just like track 1, only it's stretched out to four minutes long. It's kind of a boring song. I usually skip over this one when I'm listening to the demo in full, but perhaps it really isn't that bad and I just happen to be overly critical to it due to it being juxtaposed with the deathcore masterpiece that was played just before. This song was released way before the deathcore scene invented the offshoot genre "downtempo", but that's exactly what it reminds me of and sounds like it could be a early proto-Traitors song. If you enjoy bands such as Black Tongue or Traitors, you would probably like this track. However, only problem is that those bands build momentum out of creating entire songs from breakdowns by crafting some sections slower than others, this track on the other hand doesn't change tempo much until the finale breakdown which, I can admit, crushes fucking everything and the vocalist's inhaled groans totally make it all the more magnificent. Ha, I guess you could say that there is something redeeming about the song after all.

Things get great again with the final track "The Last Day on Earth", and this song is essentially track 2 on steroids. They saved the best for last and goddamn is it the best! It leaves you with the amazement and anticipation for what these guys were probably planning to release after this demo. Unfortunately, however, the fans that the band may have acquired from this release had to wait a astonishing 8 years later until Endless decided to create and release a full-length which followed-up this release.

Bottom line: this certainly is some quality deathcore! It combines the best elements of brutal death and melodeath and adds breakdowns. Honest to heck, these guys perfect that formula much more than the other deathcore bands that have attempted it (*cough* Hester Prynne). It really is a shame that virtually nobody has heard of these guys or heard this demo, their very simple and generic band name could have contributed to that factor, but it's just all the more proof that a band name could be literally anything and still have absolutely amazing material under their belt. This demo really is worth the listen, and if you love both oldschool and contemporary deathcore then I absolutely recommend hearing the tracks "Desired Somber" and "The Last Day on Earth".
It's just a tiny unfortunate that the least interesting song on here has to the be the second-longest of the four.