‘Visions of An Eternal Misery’ is Severing Flesh’s 1995 demo, whose entire career consisted of a second demo in 1997 and a live release in between. This short lived band was based out of the Bavarian city of Erbendorf and they had formed a year before this initial demo’s release. Opener ‘The Eternal Fall’ has mumbling bass and a sharp synthesizer stab to kick it off nicely. There’s kickass headbanging sections all over this one, a crackly splintered guitar tone and buzzy bass guitar. Drums here are tight, there’s a snappy snare tone and the drummer has lots of groove. The synth use is interesting and novel. Majestic and often ethereal landscapes drape across heavy German Death Metal.
I like the campy and dramatic interlude ‘In Mortem Ejaculamus’ (hahaha) which turns into this truly epic rocking song that is pure old school Heavy Metal with an epic and atmospheric keyboard playing an arpeggio over top, it may be my favourite part of the demo, it’s called ‘Reborn in Silence’ and gets me stoked and really delivers on this bands’ potential. The keyboards on here are a little bit ‘Phantom of the Opera’ type of atmosphere mixed with an organ played by a madman who broke into a church while this awesome riff factory guitarist is sending more and more material down the line at him chewing up these great chunky riffs.
The instruments are super in sync and are creatively working alongside one another throughout this demo and I’m loving how the bass holds it down loudly in the mix. The vocals are deep outbursts of violence that I would compare to a more monstrous and angry version of Corpegrinder’s Monstrosity days. The guitars are a bit on the thinner side mixing wise but the riffs are there and different sections flow well into one another so it makes up for it more or less.
Sometimes tremolo parts pour forth from the guitar and other times thrashing grooves like on the track ‘Bloodthirst’. The final song ‘Sever the Flesh’ really flexes the songwriting, we have a thrashing breakdown headbang part right into a Death Metal spiral into the abyss riff then into a crashing solo part. It’s fun to listen to see where these songs go, this is a sick demo that’s flown under my radar until recently.
