Time Signature Metal passway...

Genre: progressive thrash metal

In the early 1990s, the majority of the Danish metal bands in the underground scene had started gravitating towards death metal. There was nothing weird about this, as this turn simply reflected a global turn towards death metal generally. As a consequence, many of the demos that this underground scene produced were within the boundaries of death-thrash and death metal – and many of this were actually brilliant. However, there were a number of bands who went in a different direction. One of these was Eidetic whose 1992 effort “Mirror Passway” is probably my favorite demo release from that era.

While most other bands in the Danish underground metal scene took their music in a death metal direction, Eidetic – probably taking cues from Voivod, Realm and Fates Warning's “No Exit” - took their already quirky thrash metal in a much more progressive direction. Thus, “Mirror Passway” treats the listener to a handful of aggressive but quirky and sophisticated tracks, which despite pointers to Voivod and other progressive thrash acts are quite original at the end of the day.

The demo opens with an intro, with the nifty title of “Intro”, which sounds more like something out of an Amiga computer game than anything else. The first track proper, 'Darkening of My Realm' as a certain power-thrash feel to it as it takes the listener through a variations of the same cycle of riffs which break down into what sounds like a completely different song altogether, combining acoustic passages with heavy, but aggressive, ones. 'Mirror Passway (Part I)' is set off by a heavy intro characterized by dissonant guitar harmonies and followed by plenty of oddball guitar riffs and breakdowns and build-ups. The quirkiness continues in 'Mirror Passway (Part II)' which throws both thrashy aggression and pseudo-jazzy weirdness at the listener before the verse kicks in, offering both a nice vocal melody and a nice guitar riff. True to their musical aesthetics, Eiditic choose to insert an instrumental section with a wee bass solo and acoustic guitars between the song's two verses instead of a chorus. The first part of 'Pale Blue Eye' evolves around a series of dissonant riffs à la Voivod. The second part of the song is slower and features some atmospheric passages as well as a series of heavy parts (the use of semi-growled vocals in some of these parts go well together with the gruesome lyrical theme of murder, dismemberment, insanity and guilt. Starting out with a doom metal-inspired passage, which somehow reminds me of Count Raven's first album, 'The Hermit' suddenly changes character after a handful of minutes, taking on the characteristics of a power-thrash song.

As I said, this is probably my favorite demo from that era. I do not quite know why myself. Maybe the reason is simply that it was so different from the majority of demos released at the time. While many of Eidetic's peers explored the more brutal aspects of metal in the form of death metal and death-thrash, this demo was progressive and reflected a focus on sophistication and strangeness. The tracks on the album are still dark and aggressive but, like Voivod, Realm, and Watchtower, Eidetic are not afraid to challenge the listener with their use of dissonance and unconventional song structure.

Taking into account that this is a demo tape from the early 90s, the production is pretty good. It is a bit volatile and tinny in places, but I like that. It takes me back to that era, which I am very happy to have experienced first hand. The level of musicianship is much higher than on the previous demo, but there are, of course, places where the performance is not fully tight. I say 'of course' because conditions for underground bands were very different back then from what they are now, and demos were typically recorded within very tight time limits and on very tight budgets. Still, I would say that 'Mirror Passway' shows that these guys had the talent for combining the sophisticated and the aggressive.

If you are into bands like Voivod, Realm, and Watchtower as well as “No Exit”-era Fates Warning and the more complex King Diamons songs from the mid 80s, and if you are into 90s demos, then I would recommend this demo. If you do not have the collector's patience to wait for an actual original tape to surface somewhere, check out the Danish Demo Dungeon website for legal download of the demo.