Concrete Maze

Scarlet Dew was founded in 2004 with (according to their bio) “the sole purpose of making very greasy meaningless hardrock with a touch of doom”. This demo, “Concrete Maze”, is their first offering.

The demo starts out with a spoken word intro (with a depressive voice telling a depressive story to get us in the right mood), leading into the first and title track, which is a nice Hard Rock song. The song starts out quite melodic and calm, both kicks in to gear after a minute or so. The next song showcases the doom influence. The song is a lot slower and features nice crunchy riffing and an awesome guitar lead.

On to the vocals, which are the responsibility of Peggy. She has a great deep voice which works very well with the music. I read a review comparing her voice to Skin of Skunk Anansie fame, and although I wonder if I would have noticed this myself, the similarities are certainly there, especially when she hits the higher notes.

It seems Peggy has the left the band recently and the band is not planning for replacement. I wonder if they plan on making instrumental music or one of the musicians is a capable singer. Whichever it turns out to be, I hope they can keep up the level of quality they delivered on this demo.

The demo is free for download on the bands homepage, so give it a try!