1349 – Demonoir

I’ll have to do catch-up with this year’s releases since I’ve been so lazy about writing. First up is 1349′s Demonoir!

If you read my review of their last album, you know that I wasn’t too impressed. This time around they captivate me much more. In the heavy songs, their signature “fast, but slow” riffs are back and creates great contrasts with their high-tempo parts. Also unique to this album is that the band chose to make every other track a short ambient interlude to lead up to the heavier songs. This works well – Revelations of the Black Flame had a lot of good atmospheric ambient stuff, and that experience shows off in these new tracks.

Compared to their first three albums, the tempo has still been downpaced, though. This isn’t necessarily bad, but the thing I really enjoyed about 1349 was the way they could throw tremolo riffs at me non-stop without sounding monotonic or repetitive. I wouldn’t say their new approach is dumbed down, but it seems like when their music alternates between ambient and heavy riffing, it creates an excuse to not be as creative in your riff-writing. The sound is still distinctly 1349, just less so – even the guitar sound itself sounds less crisp than before, so even when there are some interesting riffs, it’s somewhat hard to hear them as anything else than constant churning.

While I think Demonoir is a step up from Revelations of the Black flame, I still think the weaknesses remain. The tonality and rhythm isn’t as challenging anymore, and while this hopefully can draw more people into this great band, I just don’t think 1349 is focusing enough on their strong points.