Released By : Slaney Records
Genre : Death Metal
Links : http://www.myspace.com/kaijumetal
Tracklist:
01. Intro – Summon The Beast
02. Spells Of The Witches
03. We Still See The Black
04. Oath Of The Pentagram
05. Firesloth
06. Feast Of The Ancient Ones
The first thing that struck me when I first got this disc was the name of the band. KAIJU is a Japanese word that translates to English as either ‘Strange Beast’ or more commonly just ‘Monster’. Strange Beast is actually a pretty good way to describe the band and especially this little E.P, while predominately death metal throughout the spine, there is a slight progressive element here, some black metal vocals and maybe even a few instances where I was reminded of a more grindcore type sound. Then you have some gothic piano type sections that threw my judgment even further out.
While it may be hard to actually describe what the band sound like, what I can say is that this E.P is pretty cool and at least three of the tunes here are worthy of a more major release. The highlight for me across the whole disc though was the lyrics which draw influence from witches, monsters, hell and other dark things that will scare the pants off your mother. Musically, it can be a bit hard to judge when there is so many different elements, but overall I’d say that most of the music is done pretty well. The drums are a little bit basic though, but there is a couple of really interesting guitar solos that make up for it.
I will however voice a bit of a complaint here, and it’s one that really affected my possible enjoyment of the E.P, and that is the pretty crappy production. Yes I understand the fact that it’s just an E.P, and it’s from a band that is as yet an unknown entity trying to garner some attention, but whereas I normally take these facts into account with self-released stuff, this one is actually being put out by a record label. Sure SLANEY RECORDS are as indie as you can get, but whenever a band’s product has a record label on it somewhere, there is a certain degree of quality that needs to be adhered to, and unfortunately I’m just not hearing it here.
KAIJU certainly show some potential in this E.P, and death metal fans looking for something a little different and thought provoking could do much worse than this, but really we need to hear this band release something with a decent production before we can work out if they are going to go forward or not.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 7/10
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