Stormguarde

Fogg are a band that’s hard to love, but considering that the dude seems to play bedroom black metal I guess you could put him in the “could be a fair bit worse” category, which is surely better then nothing.

The dude screams, surely a brave thing to do considering his room is no doubt close to his parents. There’s attempts, albeit poor ones at switching the riffs around (never mind that the sound changes a good deal when a new riff is introduced) and it’s clear with things like the slightly varied drum programming and attempts at dynamics and epic, soaring synth bits - which honestly aren’t *that* bad- that Mr.Fogg has some decent enough ideas and is passionate enough about his black metal to pursue them.

Yeah, this isn’t myspace black metal but it’s still pretty average, and the commendably earnest attempt behind “Stormguarde” just makes the end result just a little bit more sad and disappointing. “Enthralled by The Ancient Voice” has a decent enough arrangement, all slow ‘n’ suicidal with clean guitars entwining around the central guitar dirge. It’s a pretty quality Xasthur impersonation that with some better production (something that doesn’t scream “web cam mike and low volume practise amp”) and a more thought out ending - without the obvious change in guitar tracks, at least- could be quite good. There’s a decent enough sense of melody in most of the tracks, although it’s all very cliched; changing around from the more mid paced dirges of Enthralled and “Upon a Dark Forgotten Past” to stuff that’s more Darkthrone-y and reminiscent of Nattens-era Ulver. Basically: tremelo riffs that were pretty cool 14 or so years ago but have now been done to death. You have heard all of these tracks at least 15 times before.

For a debut demo there’s potential on offer, but little else. Back to my bedroom black metal bitching: if you’re going to do a new guitar track every time you change riffs at least keep the mic placement the same! Honestly this wouldn’t have been so bad if the instrument playing didn’t have a heavy vibe of “teen gets his first guitar, decides to write black metal demo”. As it stands though this is some seriously flawed and extremely cliched stuff, and there’s a long way for Fogg to go.