From the Shadows of Time

Sargon was a late 90's Italian black metal band, founded in 1999 and with only one demo in its discography, independently published in 2001. The aim of the band was apparently clear: merging lo-fi black metal with a Swedish sense of melodic riffing and a certain amount of epic and NWOBHM hints: even a little bit of power metal was introduced in the formula, thus creating a sound, if not original as a whole, at least peculiar on its own. There's no trace of the original physical release, as it was printed in a limited number of copies in a domestic, completely do-it-yourself environment and approach. It was, for all of you to know, a home-mastered CD-R with a straight "out of personal computer printer" booklet. In 2016, a more refined and newly equalized version was released only via video streaming platforms, and that is all that remains of this effort.

The riffs are very melodic in nature, the rhythmic patterns are drum machine-based, and the screaming vocals were trying to sound rageful and hysterical, with some hints of ultra-guttural growls here and there. Production wise, it's a simple, home-recorded demo, truly genuine but also amateurish: mid-frequencies are not tamed down as they should be, and the percussion samples are not terrible, but neither very convincing. Power metal and Swedish black metal are melted in a unique, lo-fi assault as in the track "Ultimate Pagan Avenger", also displaying a middle section where the pace is slowed down, and the band relies on minor key arpeggios like in Norwegian black metal style. This demo EP is quite a mixture of things, even some recalling palm-muted, a-tonal death metal riffs, performed on a few occasions. All is blended together in an overall low quality production, maybe too raw and not very appropriate for this marriage of styles.

Execution-wise, there are a number of forgettable mistakes, such as out of tempo and out of rhythmic grid bleedings, especially in the vocal performance, too vehement and blatant to be properly precise. This is a product of its time, when black metal, even in Italy, was starting to spread widely, and a lot of passionate musicians were very engaged in taking the underground style, approach and, I would dare to say, lifestyle and made their own statements around it! Nothing very groundbreaking here, and maybe even a failed and short-lived experiment in merging a relatively wide range of techniques, but as a demonstration of what was happening in that period of time, among extreme metal scenes all around the world!