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Cool! Got this demo out of the blue in my mailbox. Never heard of this band at all, but with the quality of this demo I’ll be looking forward to hearing more. The note with the CD says they used to be more death metal, but are now moving in a more gothic direction. There are four songs on this disc, all: two very good, one good, and one stinker. Let’s run through them.

Incendium do sound kind of like a death metal band, with a sound based on solid heavy riffing with some nice melodic leads. They have a keyboard player, but you don’t hear him much. The musicianship here is very good, especially the guitarwork and the excellent drumming by Otto Vaisanen. The major difference from death metal is the vocals, which are almost all clean. The odd deathgrowl turns up here and there, but for the most part vocalist Aki Hahto sings, and sings well. He has a strong midrange voice a bit reminiscent of Sonata Arctica’s Tony Kakko, but with vocal inflection that reminds me a lot of Ian Astbury of The Cult. He has a slight accent, but overall he sounds extremely good.

The first two songs here are very good, with "Crush" easily standing out as the best song on the demo. The combination of heavy, death-style riffs with the smooth vocals is very cool, and the vocal melodies are catchy as hell. I got this thing yesterday, and as of this moment I have not been able to get "Crush" out of my head, great tune. "Life Sarcasm" has the same high-quality guitarwork, but the vocal lines aren’t as strong, though it’s still very enjoyable.

The last song is "Wither", and it’s the only song here I don’t like. The guitars are simpler and not as tasty on this song, and the vocal lines just suck. The verse is limp, the chorus is annoying, ugh. It does have a cool violin playing along in the background for most of the song, which is an interesting effect, and when the time comes for the guitar lead, the violin plays it, even styling it like a guitar. So that’s different, and kind of neat, but it can’t save the song from the rotten vocal melody. When the chorus comes on, I just want to shoot myself in the head.

The first three songs on here are really cool, and I have to say I would love to hear a longer disc from this band. The production is really excellent, very professional sounding and clear. The combination of death-metal riffing with the strong vocals has a unique sound that this band would do well to pursue. With more strong songs like these the band could produce a really worthy album. Despite the mention of goth influences in their letter, I don’t hear much goth influence here, and I hope the future doesn’t hold any, as this band is good enough without it. Bottom line: with the one exception this demo shows off headbanging material with fine playing and catchy singing, and you really can’t ask for better than that. Incendium is a name I’ll keep an eye out for.