UMUR
"An Integral Sense" is a cassette demo tape release by Danish, Esbjerg based death/doom metal act Caustic. The demo is the band´s first release and it was released in October 1991.
"An Integral Sense" features 4 tracks and a full playing time of 15:29 minutes. "Beyond the Incessible Barriers" is a short intro track, while the remaining three tracks are "regular" length death/doom metal tracks. The material is relatively well written and intriguing, and in addition to heavy doomy riffs, the listener is also exposed to an aggressive and quite convincing growling vocalist, and some melancholic guitar leads. I hear a slight nod towards very early Paradise Lost, but Caustic have something the British band never had, and that´s slightly adventurous fusion influenced drumming, which makes the music on the demo a bit different from other contemporary releases. It´s a drumming style Caustic would develop upon further on their next demo.
The sound production is pretty raw and lo-fi, which isn´s surprising when considering that "An Integral Sense" is an early 90s death metal cassette tape demo. To my ears the band got the best out of what they had to work with though, and the sound suits the music well. It´s not many Danish death metal acts from that time which stood out as anything special or original, and Caustic certainly isn´t the most original sounding act out there either on this release, but they show an intention to write original material and that´s always praise worthy. A 3 star (60%) rating is deserved.
