As some of you might have noticed, I went to the Midtjysk Metal Mayhem mini-festival here in Silkeborg the other evening.
At some point during the evening, I went out to get some fresh
air, naturally ending up in the group of people who were smoking outside, thus
making the quest for fresh air a tad more troublesome than needed. Anyway, I'm
chatting away with someone from Dawn of Demise, and this other, by the look of
it, very young bloke takes part in the discussion as well. He then hands me a
CD, not knowing that'll not only listen to it, but also put my humble opinion
about it out here for all of you to behold.
Good things first: The cover looks very cool. Simple, but
evil and cool. Professional packaging of the CD in general - I like that a lot.
Also, there is one central thing I like about this demo CD: The spirit is
certainly in place. I'm left with the same feeling I had when I listened to some
of the demo bands that I bought or traded tapes from during end of the eighties
or the beginning of the nineties - the feeling of 'man, these guys are into what
they do'. That is the true foundation for great music.
That said, the three songs of this CD show that there are things that Sickness
Within have to work hard on. The song writing as such is - albeit not highly
original - not bad - the mixture of old-school thrash and a very slight tendency
towards more metalcore sounding breaks is alright. The two most obvious things
I'd improve if I were Sickness Within would be these:
Singer and guitarist Søren should probably focus on either the guitar or singing.
The vocal performance leaves much to be desired and will need a lot of training
as I hear it. Listen to some of the great voices of thrash, Søren - Chuck Billy,
Bobby Blitz, Eric AK - listen and learn!
The solos on 'Constructed Hate' are really poor. More focus, more work. There's
a reason why solos went out of fashion for many young bands some years ago - I
think it was mainly because it's damned difficult and a lot of hard work to make
them sound right. Put the effort it takes into it!
I expect to be hearing more from Sickness Within - there's a good basis for
great thrash metal methinks!
