One Tail, One Head

The oddball band name and the untitled tracks on this demo might suggest something a little more avant-garde, but the truth is that One Tail, One Head is really a pretty straightforward oldschool black metal band. Something of a blend between the second Darkthrone album and 'Deathcrush' if Mayhem listened to more Celtic Frost than Venom, this tape seems to really be an exercise on how precisely an oldschool sound can be made in 2008. The answer: pretty precise, though of course the songwriting here is way too even-handed and concrete to come from the old days. It's also not especially interesting but I don't really think that's this band's intent.

Well I think you an anticipate what this sounds like: three-chord tremolo riffs or Frost crunch without the palm muting over rickety thrash beats or thumping one-two rhythms while vocals howl incoherently and somewhat randomly overhead. The songwriting is undoubtedly amateurish, but I believe that's the intent: riffs are joined end-to-end just like in the old days of the Norwegian scene and there's not much in the way of counterpoint melody, rhythmic variation, or subtle post-rock influences. While I can't exactly say that the music is flawed- I mean, it achieves what it sets out to do- it also doesn't have the uniqueness or fire that made music like this interesting when people were actually making music like this. One Tail, One Head is making oldschool black metal, yeah, but the distinction is that this band actually knows what oldschool black metal is when Mayhem didn't. I appreciate some of the more offhand elements like the perplexing yelping vocals that show up sometimes, which makes this feel a bit more authentic, but overall the songs are static and just sort of around to be a museum piece rather than something you'd actually listen to.

This demo listens more like an essay on oldschool black metal than it does an actual black metal demo tape- I don't get the impression that these songs are supposed to do anything songs are usually supposed to do, like be interesting to the listener or catchy. I think One Tail, One Head are just sort of trying to prove a point and mimic the oldschool style as best as possible. In the end, it's like a replica of a traditional impressionist painting: neat, but you can still flip to the original in an art book at any moment which makes the replica sort of irrelevant. That analogy makes absolutely no sense. Whatever this is just kinda boring.