Etherial Dawn from the Belgian town of Leuven recently released their second demo entitled Lethargic Awakenings. As the band put it themselves, they play dark metal from a black perspective. They use the usual elements; a soprano for the “ohhhhss” en the “ahhhhs”, a lot of keyboards and long tracks with playing times around 7 minutes.

As you can read it`s not the most original band in the world but they`re quite good at what they do. The tracks show some nice ideas and the aforementioned soprano can actually sing for a change. Most of the times, with demo bands in this genre, the singer’s girlfriend is in the band because of her good looks and not of her singing capabilities. I hope this doesn`t imply that Kathelijne is an ugly girl but to be absolutely sure she should send me some pictures of herself so I can judge for myself (thanatosti@hotmail.

com).

Singer Bart Smeets’vocals sometimes remind me of Infernal Beauty (rip?). The music is in the vein of most melodic/gothic black metal bands and personally I wouldn`t mind if they`d spiced it up a bit because it is at times a bit too tame. Although they have some good ideas and they`re heading in the right direction I think it`s too early to speak of the next metal sensation and the band has to grow a bit before recording an album. The playing is a bit sloppy at times, the scream too forced and the arrangements too standard.

If you`re a sucker for melodic gothic black metal you`ll probably like this. If you like your metal more brutal and aggressive, this is not the band for you.