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Demo(n)s
Deadlight: Melucine
02/08/07 || Global Domination
This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksucker Stephen Fallen.
Wow, what a pleasant surprise. Deadlight is an extremely young Finnish band with only one previous demo under their belt. Despite the band’s youthful countenance, “Melucine” sounds professional from both a performance and production point of view. I have to admit, my view on this EP doesn’t deviate much from that of Lord K’s take on the band’s first demo. I hear a ton of inspiration from Katatonia and Opeth here, but Deadlight embraces most sides of both bands, giving them a fairly fresh overall sound.
The first comparison that pops up is between Deadlight vocalist Juha Tretjakov and Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse. Err, and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt. Honestly, you can take your pick, because Tretjakov’s clean singing lies somewhere between those two guys. He is not quite as sleek sounding as Renkse and he’s not as mournful as Åkerfeldt. Opeth and Katatonia should get Juha on speed-dial ASAP, in case they need a stand-in someday. While Tretjakov’s voice has the beautiful, haunting qualities of those guys, it also shares their major weakness, which is a lack of vocal range. Like Renkse and Åkerfeldt, Juha’s voice sits in the very middle, never stretching far beyond the notes he knows he can nail.
Moving along, the riffs are fairly scattershot in composition. Album opener “Touch of Pure” reminds me of Opeth’s “Damnation/Deliverance” days. For contrast, “Melucine” has some tasty acoustic/electric interplay that is more akin to “Still Life”. Gorgeous album closer “Loose Sleep”, on the other hand, could have been cut directly from Kataonia’s “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”. All six of these songs feature leads that are very similar to the sleek melodies found on Katatonia’s newer releases. Deadlight does find the time to put their own stamp on the guitar side of things, this time with some very clean, simple guitar solos that make wonderful accents.
Percussion wise, “Melucine” is good, but probably won’t make Jari Viidanoja a drumming superstar. The drums do sound fairly natural, which is really nice. Kimmo Kulo’s bass playing is equally good, except for one brief moment, as unfortunately his biggest chance to shine is also this EP’s biggest misstep. “Irresolute” is the album’s heaviest song and it’s the only cut with enough space for the bass to really stand-out. The whole song is very “Morningrise” and quite enjoyable… until the 2:30 minute mark, when everything breaks down into a truly awful bass solo. Kimmo does a really good job up to and after that point, but there’s only about 5 guys I want to hear bass-solos from and he’s just not one of them.
“Melucine” comes off as a mosaic of Opeth and Kataonia, mixing and matching the good stuff from all eras of two modern metal powerhouses. Anyone that would like to see modern Katatonia be a little heavier or a more succinct Opeth (none of these songs eclipse the 7 minute mark) should check out “Melucine”. It’s times like this I wish I owned a record label – I’d sign these guys in a second and make them one of my marquee bands.
8 medieval snake ladies out of 10.
(Note: That’s an 8 on the demo scale. There’s a mathematical formula for converting EP-to-LP, but it requires a graphing calculator and a funny hat. By the way, can anyone tell me if “Melucine” really is a Finnish spelling of “Melusine”, a snake-woman and siren of European mythology? Honestly, I just want to know so I can totally pat myself on the back for picking up on that. Also, it’d be nice to know my time in college wasn’t a total waste. Wow teach, I lernt sumtin!)
(Note by GD: Usually we don’t score demos, but in this case we’ll make an exception since it’s obviously a self-released EP and Stephen is having some real man-love for these Finnish bitches. It will never happen again.)
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: unsigned
- Website: www.deadlight.org
- Band
- Panu Lehtoniemi: guitars
- Juha Tretjakov: vocals
- Tuuka Kivi: guitars
- Kimmo Kulo: bass
- Jari Viidanoja: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Touch of Pure
- 02. Irresolute
- 03. Into the Blackened Soil
- 04. Her Eyes Passed on
- 05. Melucine
- 06. Loose Sleep