Death Squad was one of Singapore's first death metal bands. They formed in 1990, released only one demo called Hallucinatory that same year, and broke up shortly thereafter. But is it any good? As I've learned from experience, just because you were the first doesn't mean you're any good. Well, there's only one way to find out.
The first song consists of dark clean guitars accompanied by extremely muffled, echoing shouts. Sure, the instrumental performance has a few mistakes and it feels amateurish, but I'm absolutely transfixed by the mysterious atmosphere.
The second song begins with some jazzy drums accompanied by some groovy bass. What an odd thing to have on a death metal demo. They are soon joined by dissonant, echoing guitars. They sound like they came out of a psychedelic rock album. It still has a bit of a death metal sound, but the trippy quality is what dominates. Later on, the guitars take on more of a black metal sound, but this is also accompanied by “spooky” sounds which I think sound like the howling of wolves. I'm not entirely sure because the production is ridiculously muffled.
The third song sounds more like actual death metal, and it's actually pretty good. The drums offer up plenty of blast beats and double bass and the riffs have a strong thrash metal quality to them. The guitars might make a few mistakes on occasion, but their performance is still energetic and loads of fun. They still throw in some “spooky” sounds. Normally, I would hate these, but I like them here. They have a real cheesy quality that I love. Also, the howling solo near the end is just fantastic. It sounds like the guy is murdering his guitar.
The fourth song begins with more clean guitars. They sort of remind me of Metallica. The death metal still exhibits a strong thrash metal sound, and I love that screeching solo they do near the end. The guitarist might make a few mistakes with ordinary riffs, but he sure knows how to play an awesome solo. The last song sounds much more aggressive than the songs that came before it. Some parts sound like Von, if Von was actually, you know, good. I also like those vibrato-laced clean guitars near the halfway point. It feels like I'm having a weird acid trip. At this point, the muffled shouts are starting to remind me of Akitsa. Near the end, all the instruments go crazy. Beautiful.
By all objective measurements of quality, this would be considered a bad demo, but for some strange reason, I love it. I love the groovy bass, I love the trippy elements, and I love the howling guitar solos. I just wish the vocals weren't so muffled, but then again, the production on Terminal Death's Faces of Death demo was just as bad and I loved them.
0 comments:
Post a Comment