The awkwardly named The Away are stupidly obscure. Nothing is known about them other than the members' names and the title of their only demo. No one could even find the cover to said demo. As you all know, I'm a sucker for anything that's incredibly obscure, and The Away's logo mesmerized me. When I eventually encountered a download link to their demo, I knew I had to listen to it. I didn't care if it sucked, I didn't care if it sounded like it was recorded in a dead rat's asshole, I just wanted to listen to something that's more obscure than even Emicrany.
The album begins with this short intro that consists of these strange synthesized trumpets that sound more at home on a dark ambient album. There are also these strange gobbling and babbling sounds that show up near the end of the album. I have no idea what they're all about. Luckily, this song is only a minute and a half in length, so it doesn't last long.
After that bizarre affair, we get to the death metal itself. The production is incredibly muffled. It's even worse than Rator's Evil Symphony demo. Normally, I would dismiss the album as shit right there, but for some strange reason, I was drawn further into it, like an archeologist trying to decipher the meaning of some mysterious carvings on the walls of some ancient temple.
As I continued to listen, the music became clearer to me, and it was actually pretty good. The drums are pretty competent in their performance, playing plenty of blast beats and double bass as well as a few great fills to spice things up. The growls are deep but also rather gruff. He sounds like a combination of Chris Barnes and Barney Greenway. The riffs are rather chunky, which fits well with the muffled production. They also play plenty of solos, whose glory shines through like the sun through a wall of dark clouds.
In conclusion, while the production maybe an absolute mess, the music is great. This is one of those demos where you just got to give it a chance to grow on you. It's incredibly obscure, they put on a wicked performance, and I love it.
0 comments:
Post a Comment