Demo 2010

Wolves Guard My Coffin clearly have a noble goal and good ideas, but they lack the recording equipment to execute them properly and enjoyably. There are basically a few good things and a few bad things about this demo, so let me get into them more.

The good things include savory riffs, tight drumming and an image and lyrical themes which are just awe-inducing. There is no way any fan of extreme metal can look at a song title like "Storming the Fortress of God" and not smile and get as giddy as a schoolboy. Although the lyrics are cliched and lacking, they're going in the right direction, and perhaps with a little more schooling and use of metaphors and Thesaurus.com, they could get somewhere!

As for the bad things, they are sadly more numerous than the good. For one thing, there is no bass guitar, so this entire demo feels very light and thin (the exact opposite of what war metal should be!). By leaving out bass, the band is effectively eliminating an entire dimension of music they could potentially have. The drumming is very tight...but that's because it's a drum machine! Usually, this is no problem if the machine is programmed well, but this one isn't, and it sounds 100% robotic and fake (especially when cymbals die out all of a sudden when they clearly shouldn't be). The vocals are alright, but nothing to write home about. If the band had better production, the vocals could fit in quite well and sound better, but like this they dominate all the other instruments a bit, and when a scream or shout/growl of some sort is attempted, you can't hear anything else because it gets too loud.

So yeah, good ideas executed shittily. This is just a demo though, and at heart it was enjoyable, so all we can do is hope for a good EP with good production, and if that happens, we'll have some kickass black metal on our hands!

The production on this demo is very thin. The high, thready guitar tone and weak drum sound (is it a drum machine on some tracks?) rob this of much of its impact... and if ever a band needed a bassist, it's this one. Still, for a demo, it's not too bad. The snarled vocals are right up front, and are one of the band's better features.

There are tons of mic pops and other minor flaws throughout, giving this demo a live feel that's a good fit for the black/thrash tunes on offer here. Storming the Fortress of God is an anthemic, thrashing paean to war against heaven -- good, straightforward stuff, though the Ride of the Valkyries intro goes on way too long. Glorious Weaponry is a more conventional blasting black metal song; have to admit I was bored by this one. Fortunately, the next song more than makes up for it. The shifting, mid-paced tremolo riffs and spacious dual-vocal sections give this song a convincingly epic feel. Werewolf Blood's lycanthropic lyrics and straightforward, triumphant main riff make it the best song on the record. Throttle and Maim has a much heavier production, and I like the mid-paced parts, but I wasn't as interested in the blasting sections. The soloing right before the end of the demo is great!

This is pretty good for a demo; it's a solid collection of Destroyer 666-ish songs, and it'd probably make a good live set. This might be a band to watch! Recommended.

Standout Tracks: And End Like the Mountains, Werewolf Blood, Throttle and Maim

Review by vorfeed: http://www.vorfeed.net