Satanic Lust

In my Black Vomit review, I talked about how the production made the songs redundant compared to their newer, cleaner subsequent versions. Despite this demo coming out afterwards, the production is somehow worse than the first demo, much worse. There is a re-recording of Satanas here, which is performed worse and sounds worse than its original version, with the only real merit to the song being Wagner's screams which are still perfect at this point.

The drums are probably the worst-mixed instrument here; the snare fades in and out annoyingly, the toms sound like someone throwing golf balls at a pillow, and the cymbals are ridiculously compressed and thin. This seriously devalues the record, and unfortunately ruins any potential memorability or playability.

One thing that is killer about this demo is Wagner's vocals, as I mentioned before, but they stand out most prominently on Nightmare, which may be the band's most well-known song, and although this demo version can't hold a candle to the I.N.R.I. version, the performance is still ok. Third Slaughter has an eerie, atmospheric intro that sadly becomes nulled by the spontaneous drumming over the out of time guitars, I can't tell whether the snare or the toms are being played and this ruins the rhythm of the song, which goes for the rest of the demo.

The band seems to lack cohesion on this demo, which is uncharacteristic of Sarcófago, considering their prior and subsequent efforts. The drums do not keep a steady rhythm, which leads to the guitars constantly rushing or dragging, killing the pacing of the songs and by extension, the songs' structures.

The mixing sounds completely off on Satanic Lust, to the point of sounding irritating. The drums are in the background and borderline inaudible, the guitars are way up front in the mix and the dry tone gives you a headache, the vocals are sometimes too loud and sometimes too quiet, and the bass is seemingly absent.

The riffs are ok, but once again held back by the very static-heavy production, and the vocals are drowned out under the grating guitars and drums in this song. Overall, this demo features 3 very good songs that have been obliterated by production constraints and sloppy performances. Thankfully, the band would redeem themselves not too long after.