After a first 1-track demo, ‘The Night Of The Long Fangs’, the American duo of Hekseblad (which is actually Dutch for ‘Witches Leaf’) returns with their first EP. This ‘The Fall Of Cintra’ clocks in around 20 minutes and is inspired by Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher.
Personally, I’m not much of a fan of The Witcher, so I don’t feel I’m the right person to comment on the content. But as I said in the review of the previous 1-track demo: the music can do the talking. And these two gentlemen are pretty good at that. On these four tracks, where ‘The Night Of The Long Fangs’ is also part of, we hear some decent Black Metal. There is enough melody in the songs, but in for instance the closing title track, we also hear a heavy riff and equal heavy drumming. The buzzing melodies that are woven throughout the demo, work well in the feeling that the demo gives. The creativity of the duo is perhaps best expressed in the aforementioned closing track. It goes from a heavy riff to classical piano pieces, only to erupt into a Black Metal storm again and end with an appropriate spoken word sample – an epic song full of variation.
Here and there the musical ideas could still be refined, so the songs will sound more cohesive and it will flow into each other more organically. A few finishing touches, then, but for a first ‘real’ release, this is certainly not a bad experience.
