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This review is written on the re-release of the first demo of the band Feu Gregeois. There is not much of a difference to the first version, as it lacks merely of a small intro track and it is now distributed on tape; whereas a CD-r had been chosen by the band to distribute their first demo under their own direction.

On their first demo Feu Gregeois already tries to combine a lot of elements into their music and to enrich it accordingly. All songs are peppered with some neat and small elements, whose purpose is to raise the quality of the compositions and to keep the atmosphere up. To some extent is the band certainly able to achieve this, but sometimes less is often more. Especially the amount of different vocal styles which can be found in a single song, often three or more, and which appear rather randomly or better said without any reference to the composition, leave the listener often in a state of confusion, as it is hard to follow the band and their ideas; it might also be possible to state that the vocals sound out of place occasionally. On the keyboards and some samples the same point of criticism can be brought forth.

Black Metal with some Death Metal is offered on this demo and the quality is not that bad. Some decent ideas can be found here and there, but they vanish under the dominance of the negative elements; the lack of professionalism and experience in terms of the song-writing can undoubtedly be discovered. The songs offer ambient breaks, whereas the rest of the music does not progress into some fast and aggressive style, but stays at a calm and friendly level. Some kind of catchiness is always apparent and the melodies are often quite good to listen to with their pagan/folk style.

This demo features some point of interest, but its shortcomings overshadow the positive aspects and therefore is the band not able to fascinate the listener over a longer period of time. Nevertheless is it possible to listen to the recording, but something will always disturb the atmosphere and it becomes pretty fast obvious that the band wanted much, but achieved far less.


Short:

Performance: Black Metal with occasional Death Metal vocals.
Production: quite good, but could still be improved.
Song-writing: a good deal of variation in tempo and arrangements and some keyboards elements
Positive: Le Siege has some nice moments, atmosphere of some parts of songs
Negative: order of songs, balancing, predictable song-writing and some of the vocal styles and arrangement of elements.
Booklet: no lyrics, basic information (studio, composers etc.)
Length: 15-16 minutes