Vim Fuego
Cod Peace, a little known Aussie outfit, didn’t seem to know which genre of metal they liked best, so they played them all. Black metal, death metal, thrash, and a bit of whatever else you might fancy, all often within the one song. They got so indecisive they gave up on metal completely and went alternative, but that’s another story for another day.
Right from the start of “Earthcorb”, the sound is a pummelling, technical maelstrom, like Atheist crossed with Meshuggah, with Neurosis’ vocalists. And then it wigs out into a dreamier, almost atmospheric passage, almost like black metal with Les Claypool on bass, then a thrashed out section, with buried Alchemist style vocals. Oh yeah, and all this is played at about a hundred miles an hour.
“One Foot In The Sun” starts with a raw black metal intro, a la Darkthrone or Marduk, but then pulls back to an almost Middle Eastern themed feel, and then gallops into a good old mid-pace death metal section, and then bursts into a percussive blast.
For a demo, this is very impressive. All the instruments are clear, and it is all very, very tight. The rapid stylistic changes take place without ever missing a beat. Vocals are often the downfall of many demos, but there’s no problem here. It seems like there are at least half a dozen different voices here, from an ungodly death grunt, to a blackened screech, a monastic wailing, and another two or three for good measure.
The problem is, there’s just too much going on. Just as you get a grip on what’s happening, it’s all metamorphosed. It’s like Dillinger Escape Plan and Mr Bungle in a head-on collision, and the resulting carnage being fed into an atom smasher. It seems like Cod Peace had a shitload of influences and wanted to pay tribute to all of them. In every song. More than once. Relaxing listening it is not!
This demo was probably limited to a run of about 12, and the band changed direction dramatically after this, so your chances of ever hearing it are pretty small. All the same, for a self-released demo, few ever come close to this in skill, production values and sheer schizoid ferocity.