Take O

Indeed a great demotape release of 1999, that arrived to my hands some time ago - MASQUE OF INNOCENCE dwell in the Portuguese Metal Underground since 1997 and after some delays concerning their line-up (and an unreleased demo that did not satisfied the quality patterns of the band), the band decided to put their sound on the hears of the Portuguese bangers; and they did it quite well. The band composed by Nuno Damião (vocals), Hugo Lopes (keyboards), Nuno Conceição (guitar), Paulo Batista (bass) and Rui Brito (drums), recorded 5 songs of high quality in the fields of what we might call Melodic Death or Doom/Death (I don't know why but we are really good at these kind of sound as stated by several bands in the scene): '753-alpha' - with excellent vocals by Elisabeth Santos and a strong doomish feeling; 'Emptiness Portrait' - typical death/doom song but really groovy and ; 'Dormant Bliss' - an instrumental masterly performed by Hugo, very sad and, at the same time, very hypnotic; 'Until The End' - great intro and then, discharging their sound and demonstrating in full power what MASQUE OF INNOCENCE are made of (this is my highlight of the demo); finally we got 'Wrapped In Tears' - another menacious discharge but much more doomish, yet great enough as ending song. Despite being a demotape, the sound is quite good and the production is high above the average usually practiced in these demos - a negative note, in my opinion and a reflection of the tape format, is the silence time left in the A side but this is a simple detail in the overall release. Nowadays the band is looking for a new grunter (Nuno Damião left the band in the beginning of this year), a fact that is delaying them of releasing something more but the band is currently working in new stuff to surprise the Portuguese metalheads (and outsiders too). Gotta hear them...