Band: Pandemonium
Title: Promo 2010
Label: Godz Ov War Productions
Distribution: Godz Ov War Productions
Release date: early 2011
Review: promo/demo-MCD (+ bonus video tracks)

Pandemonium from Poland… Would it be the Pandemonium that started more than twenty years ago? Indeed, they are…
The band was formed in 1990. After two demos, Pandemonium released the debut album, The Ancient Catatonia (re-released in 2001 with the second demo, Devilri, as bonus), which was one of the strongest Polish releases that very same year (1993). In 1995 the band changed its moniker into Domain, and three highly acclaimed releases followed: Pandemonium (1995), …From Oblivion… (1999) and Gat Etemmi (2002). In 2004, however, the band decided to change their moniker again into the original one, Pandemonium, with two new albums, Zonei (2004) and Hellspawn (2007).

Later this year, Polish label Pagan Records will release the next full length, which probably will be called Misanthropy. I do look forward, yet in mean time we’ll have to do with a demo / EP / MCD, consisting of two newly recorded songs and several additional video tracks. This compilation is available through young Polish production-label Godz Ov War.

The audio tracks, Black Forest and God Delusion, were recorded at the end of September 2010 at Black Bottle Studio with producer / engineer / mixer Grzegorz Kopcewicz. And as a matter of fact, it brings nothing really new. But who needs a ‘new’ Pandemonium? This stuff still combines filthy and raw Old School Death Metal with an extremely blackened edge – or is this an evolution? It does sound ‘blacker’ than before, that’s for sure. The band itself calls their style ‘Satanic Dark Metal’, yet this does not cover the package completely. It’s too modest, you see. ‘Satanic’ all right, ‘Dark’ and ‘Metal’ too, but this is much more to experience. This material goes way beyond what we’re used to. What a suffocating atmosphere, what a bloodied sound, what a (both sado and maso) pleasure to undergo…
If this is what Misanthropy is going to sound like, well, I do look forward impatiently!

The bonus video tracks are threefold. The first seven songs were registered at two different festivals during the second part of 2010, the last one is a live clip (Frost). With exception of Frost, the average quality isn’t that optimum, yet not that bad either…

[the score only goes for the two studio tracks]

90/100

Ivan Tibos.