Purnamwulan was one of Malaysia's earliest black metal bands, forming all the way back in 1993. Four years later, they released their only demo, The Fullmoon over the Kliwon. No one's heard from them since.
When I pushed play, I fully expected the production to sound like a puddle of piss and diarrhea, but to my surprise, it's not that bad. It's your standard raw black metal production. It's foggy, but not too foggy, and everything can be heard rather well. I especially like how the production gives the clean guitars on “Prologue” an eerie, otherworldly, almost LLN-type quality. The drums keep themselves at a moderate pace, but there are times when they launch themselves into blast beats. The cymbals are rather prominent and add a dissonant quality, and they also throw in a couple fills to add a bit of variety.
The vocals consist of an impish rasp that sounds familiar to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I can't figure out who the vocals remind me of, but I still like them. They make him sound like a trickster of the gods. What impressed me most were the guitars. They still have an undeniable black metal sound, but their riff structure is more reminiscent of thrash metal. I'm pretty sure they were heavily influenced by Bathory. Some of the riffs sound melodic and even become quite infectious, especially those on the grammatically incorrect “The Hidden of the Mystical Path”.
This was a surprisingly fun demo. I love the impish vocals and I especially love the melodic guitars. It's just too bad that these guys never released anything else.
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