Ex Dementia – In The Chapters of Horror
There is not much room for originality while still being good and sticking to the basics of death metal these days. Many bands over-extend themselves and try to go too bizarre or different and lose sight of the fact that they are a metal band. Its nice for once to see a band sticking to and seemingly respecting the roots of the genre I love so much.
Ex Dementia are a talented band who are doing something I really like. Playing old-school death metal influenced by thrash. They don’t need weird time signatures or to break new ground to be good enjoyable music. This is not something done to push the envelope of the genre from what I can hear. This is fun death metal played right and with a little luck this will get the attention it deserves.
There are a lot of bands nowadays doing the horror influenced death approach. Frightmare, Ghoul and..well essentially everything Razorback Records has released but this stands out to me a bit more. They are not just another band who happened to listen to Impetigo or Repulsion and tried to copy their sound.
The influences on this are so much more diverse than that. I hear a lot of Nihilist and Grave-esque riffs throughout. Especially in Double Dose of Death.
High points of this EP for me were the chorus in Double Dose of Death and the excellent cover of Kill Yourself (S.O.D.). It is short, 7 tracks running approximately 15 minutes but I think it is a good taste of what this band might be capable of.
Excellent layout. One thing these horror/gore influenced bands always nail is the layouts. Rather than use real gore we’re treated to comic gore which in my opinion always looks far more interesting in my opinion.
Its nice to hear a band like this come from my home state of New Jersey and record something worth listening to. The metal scene in this area is not what it once was but maybe if we had more bands doing music like this it would swing back in the right direction.
My only real complaints about this CD are its length (but it IS an EP) and the fact that the live bonus tracks included..well sound like total shit. I understand not every band can afford good high quality recording equipment in the live setting though. Minor complaints really. Check their MySpace and give them a shot, they deserve it.
www.exdementia.net
www.myspace.com/exdementia
-by Rick (highonblood@gmail.com)
(+35 rating, 7 votes)
