Chains - Dancing With My Demons [Svart Records - 2013]Chains is the newest metal project of E. Chains (Bleeding Fist, Naberius) from Slovenia. For "Dancing With My Demons," Chains picked up drummer Lord Samhain (Hour of 13, Anu, Mountain of Judgement, et al). Chains has a full length forthcoming, and one would presume this will be the line up on it. The drumming seems to change the direction shown in Chains earlier work. The fuzzed out drone/doom has been replaced with more traditional heavy metal sound. "Of Death" came out in October 2012, and "Dancing With My Demons" is from March 2013. Was this short period of time enough for Chains to get their new sound in good working order? “Dancing With My Demons” is a two song EP. The band logo is pretty solid and would make a nice t-shirt. The album cover is pretty rad as well. The first track, "Dancing With My Demons," starts off with a pretty bitchin, lo-fi background howl and breaks into a slow beat with really melancholy, dirgy guitars on top. The guitars on this song are really nice, even though they're not played too well. The style of music is what I would just call "heavy metal." The pacing is sort of like sludge, but not quite heavy or low enough. One might go so far as to say Chains sounds like a Venom 7" played at 33 rpm. This is about all the positive I can find on this EP. The songs are boring and poorly arranged. When listening I felt like I was standing in a garage down the street watching some high school kids with spiked armbands on. "Hey mister, can you buy us beer?" "If your girlfriend flashes me, I'll give her one of my Zimas." The vocals are terrible. Picture your least favorite kid in high school, tell him he's a front man, and then let him rock the mic. Maybe it sounds worse, too, because there are like three lines in each song that aren't the chorus being repeated over and over and over. Sure, I can't speak Slovenian, so E. Chains is more linguistically proficient than I, but whatever. Finally, one man metal bands (yes, I know they're a duo now)...why? Get some friends that play the other instruments better than you and start a real band. Argh I feel that just deleting these songs from my computer won't make me feel free enough. Oh well, I probably won't even delete them because I'm THAT lazy. I guess this EP is out as a super limited 7". Really, don't go out of your way to get it unless you're related to this guy or you're trying to bang him. Paul Casey
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