Riena

Fans seek always a reference they can relate something to. Immortal with the album ``Pure Holocaust`` or Emperor’s ``In the nightside eclipse`` would be adequate examples for this. There is always some kind of burden that exist and that the band has to carry through their time of existence. This problem does occur for Musta Surma as well.
Their first demo was really good and I would really recommend it to everyone who is fond of trve Black Metal. As usual the time did not stand still and also this band [i]evolved[/i] and tried to find some kind of style that perhaps later on can be described as typical Musta Surma music. Perhaps taking this into consideration it is possible to understand the changes between the first two releases. The production is cleaner, the vocals are quite dominant, (again) there is hardly a bass and the bass drum is not more than a low sound in the depths of the music. The dirty sound and the grim atmosphere is what I miss.
There are quite a lot points I would criticize:
- The guitars are not played clean. You can hear interferences caused by the hands. This is not always the case, but it occurs several times and sometimes quite often in a short row. And it disturbs while listening to the tracks.
- The vocals are sometimes boring, just screaming without changes in the amplitude. A little bit more variation would not be bad.
- A balanced production would be good, too (less vocals, more bass, more bass drums; the music is a little bit bloodless).

The songs itself are quite OK. Compared to their prior album, the way of structuring and varying the tempi is better and they are even after all those years I have the demo not in any way annoying or boring; but they lack of atmosphere. Overall I would give about 75 points. The album is a nice to have, but not a must have.