KATHAARIA (s/t) Demo Tape

At first I must admit, that I'm absolutley not into Black Metal. But a very good friend of mine is part of this three-piece and so I will review this four song tape. It was released in October 2000 and recorded on a seven track machine. The sound is ok and KATHAARIA doesn't only play in high-speed regions. There are a few slow and mid-tempo parts and they were sounding heavy and that's not very typical for the usual Black Metal bands.

Another fact, that I really appreciate is, that they aren't using any cheesy keyboard sounds. My personal favourite is the doomy third track "Chamber Of Spirits", that reminds me a little bit to early Celtic Frost. The vocals are more Death Metal influenced, instead of this typical boring shrieking. You can hear, that the members got the skills for this kind of music and especially the guitarwork of Opulus is quite interesting. Everyone who's interested in the German Metal underground should order this tape for $ 5 or DM 10 from J. Grumptmann at: streetcleaner(at)web.deor Opomoz(at)hotmail.com It's got a total running time of twenty minutes with a nice layout and so you've get value for your money.

(KK)