There’s something to be said for a one man Death Metal project that you can listen through the entire demo without being constantly reminded that it’s just one person creating this sound. Panphobia does a pretty good job of that here on ‘Fear Domain’. Nothing here is trying to be the heaviest thing you’ve ever heard, but I don’t think that’s what really meshes with the demo’s sound anyway.
This is much more Old School Death Metal in feel and there are traces of Thrash in the riffs that provide some nice speed to the songs. The drumming shouldn’t go without mention here either, it’s very clean and keeps pace well when speeds pick up so that the demo has a really good feeling of momentum that carries.
Now the guitar tone did throw me off at first. It’s not that really low down tuned sound that I tend toward. It’s got a little electric feel to it almost. There is sometimes a more fuzzy edge to it at certain points, instead of the classic Death Metal buzzsaw. Can definitely hear some Finnish Death Metal character running through it too, with Convulse being a decent reference point, especially in the rawer and more thrash driven moments. I ended up liking that difference more as it went along.
The vocals have that low growl that certainly adds some of the weight that was missing from that aspect of things though. This really feels like a proper underground Old School Death Metal demo rather than something that is overly produced for the sake of making it sound like that. It is fast, raw, and a little Thrashy but the actual playing underneath is much tighter than you would expect and considering he is a one man project, there’s a lot that I can get behind here, and I’m looking forward to hearing more.
