Friday 8 July 2011

Auspicium – Hope Is All you Have (Tex's Review)

Actually there is no hope for this demo, so you’re left with essentially nothing. This is some really painfully “bedroom” black metal: Poorly written, performed and recorded. All the songs follow the same structure of long clean intro with many overlapping guitar parts played out of time (and often out of key) – abrupt shitty black metal part – outro that’s the same as the intro.
I’m not sure what the first song, “The Flame of Man Dies in Twilight” (lol) is supposed to be. It doesn’t work as an intro, as it doesn’t flow into the next track or do anything but set up the boring formula for the rest of the songs. The second song “I will never Forget Your Face” (lol) showcases the worst of the off time playing. Once the black metal kicks in, it’s truly awful. This guy couldn’t even play to a drum machine / click, so he mixed it super low hoping you wouldn’t notice. It doesn’t help. The mixing and production itself is just awful in general. Horrible tone, fluctuating levels. It’s what you’d expect from bedroom black metal.
This song also contains some horrible blatant mistakes. The lead at the end has a bunch of wrong notes. He’s constantly hitting incorrect notes and sliding to the right note in the riffs. This demo sounds like it’s supposed to be super atmospheric and dreamy, pretty sounding stuff, so there’s no way this can be passed off as being dissonant on purpose. It’s just shitty playing. I like the style he’s going for, but this demo just simply does not achieve that sound, or anything for that matter.
The last two songs are exactly the same as the first two, so they won’t get much comment. However “The Opportunist” has about a minute of nifty clean vocals, much better than the vocals on the rest of the demo which are sparsely utilized and seem misplaced when they are used.  Really the vocals don’t serve much of a purpose. They can’t save the songs. The title track is pretty much worthless.
It sounds like this guy had about an hour before his parents got home to write and record this entire thing, no time to account for the myriad blatant mistakes in his playing, and most certainly no time to learn how to write songs or play black metal. I appreciate the style and sound I think this demo is supposed to get across, but it just does not deliver.

Tex’s rating: 23%

            Oh, did I mention this guy is pretentious as all fuck? Check out these quotes from his myspace page. Read ‘em and LOL:
Songs for midnight walks along the ocean shore, shadowed by the mountains and forests, under the stars, drunk as can be. ....If you do not know me or do not enjoy my music, do not add me. If you aren't interested in my work, I am definitely not interested in your pathetic attempts at rap music, your "emo" bands, how you look with some stupid name written on your underage tits, or how many friends you can get by clicking here. Seriously. Save me the time of having to delete you. .. .. ..”
He doesn’t like underage tits… I don’t even…
His influences include:
“Waves as they hurl themselves at the stones. Oceans of stone. A little stream with a waterfall that no one else has ever seen. The endless sky. A tree in winter, fighting back the wind.”
And apparently his music sounds like:
            Triumph and failing in one breath.”
Remove a couple words and this would be a fairly accurate statement. Hope you kids enjoyed!
Here’s the download link for those of you brave enough to venture: http://blackmetalownsyou.blogspot.com/2011/07/auspicium-hope-is-all-you-have-demos.html

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