With very little info being available of this newly conceived Nashville, Tennessee-based Raw Black Metal band the music on this project’s debut demo should do the majority of the talking. However, we do have the band name, this demo’s title and the few words on Cloaked’s Bandcamp to put us on the right tracks…
So, yes, this is vampiric Black Metal in the right mid to late 90’s tradition, raw and elusive in its alluring atmosphere. While ‘Vampyric Sorrow’ counts five tracks, three of them are instrumentals that function as intro, interlude and outro. Still, the almost 14 minutes of the demo altogether evoke such a well-versed sense of authenticity in which those instrumentals do add a whole lot to the overall experience.
Besides the spoken (whispered) words, sampling and eerie off-key strumming, there is a big role for the keyboards in those instrumentals, something that they actually do throughout the full demo and also appear to be one of the key-factors in Cloaked’s music. While not exactly being a mirror image of bands such as Drowning The Light, the Australian act sounding usually a bit fiercer and sharper in guitar tone, Cloaked sounds a bit alike in the sense of a mutual ambiance. At least Cloaked seems to share the same starting point of the Raw Black Metal of those thriving 90’s in which the vampiric imagery was more common than in the two decades that would follow.
It might not be original, but it is a genuine piece of ancient sounding Raw Black Metal that will appeal to anyone who still holds a weak spot for those 90’s demos that were clearly built around atmosphere rather than speed and aggression. This demo’s minimalistic and primal cover might even tell you more about its musical content than any of the words above, so you can not say you haven’t been warned.
