This is okay. There's no way I'd buy this knowingly. I think this is a giant progression from the 'Godlessness' days. Gone are the awesome death vocals of Rick McCoy. Unfortunately, he traded them in for the trendy clean approach. I've heard that the band thought they'd never get signed for playing the stuff on the 'Sadness' demo. Fucking whatever. I would have signed them dammit! Anyway, the clean vocals basically suck. By giving this a listen, one can tell Rick's clean vocals needed work at the time. I've always like Rhiannon's female vocals, though, which are always a welcome aspect of Avernus (even on the full-length).

Musically on this demo, Avernus completely switched to goth rock or whatever people call that garbage. The guys can obviously write good catchy riffs, as evidenced on this demo, but that's not enough to keep me interested. I do prefer this demo to their album however, and two of the songs from this tape are on the album in a more polished form. The music is still somewhat melancholic, but nothing like the glory days of this band. If you liked 'Sadness', avoid this.

© 1999 goden