Origin: Melbourne, Australia Release: July, 2012 Label: Self-released Genre: Melodic Death Metal with a Progressive Twist A good deal of time ago – we were writing October 2010 – I featured a band called Atrum Aequora in a little potpourri post. Atrum Aequora is a female fronted Melodeath outfit from Melbourne, Australia, and it hit the spot because of its contrast between female cleans and grinding, technical Metal.

Since that time the band has gone through a few line-up changes – guitarist-vocalist Adam Donnellan left the band for example – and worked on a new demo, simply titled 2012 Demo, on which Grinding the Remains, the song we included in our earlier post, is a recurring guest. Happy to give it a quick spin!

The demo contains three songs, called Rust Twine Stitch, The Puppeteer and, as said, Grinding the Remains. There isn’t really a clear unity across the songs, though the female vocals by a lass named Celeste do work as a glue holding stuff together. Most notably, Rust Twine Stitch is of a different look and feel compared to the other two songs. It’s more up-tempo, more stimulating and more cheerful, whereas the other two songs have a darker and/or sadder inclination. Not that this is necessarily an issue, variation is good!

Contrast is present on multiple levels, but once again the female vocals are the binding factor. They act as an opposing force to both the instrumental violence and the hoarse, almost barking uncleans of guitarist/vocalist ‘Bv’. The band employs two guitars and a drum kit, but features no bass and this is a pity. The music lacks an element of a deep rolling thunder in the back and it’s my belief that this could have increased the depth of the mix.

Atrum Aequora’s 2012 Demo is an interesting piece of work. There’s room to improve, primarily in terms of optimizing the mix and adding a bass, but it’s absolutely stuff I’d like to hear more of in the future! You can stream the full demo on Bandcamp.

My Grade: 7/10
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Tags: Australian, death, melodeath, melodic, review

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2012 at 11:32 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.