Dead River Runs Dry - Winter (2012)

Dead River Runs Dry are a blackened metal band hailing from Australia and they've been nice enough to send us their self-released demo, Winter. They're a young band with lofty ambitions, shown clear as day on this demo, which features 4 songs with multiple black metal flavors.

Dead River Runs Dry try their hand at the traditional black metal sound with The Weapon Black, an intense song with an oppressive atmosphere that evokes frozen wastelands and bitter storms just like in the good old days of Immortal. The fact that the vocalist sounds just like Abbath is a huge plus in this regard. The song evolves and locks into a sweet black'n'roll groove during its second half then immediately bleeds into Paradigm of Barbaric Antiquity, another classical black metal-inspired tune that only runs for almost two minutes and feels kinda rushed as a result, failing to hook you in. Luckily, Way of the Plunderer picks up the slack and delves a bit into suicidal black metal, without being overly dramatic. In fact, it picks up the pace quite a bit during its second half. Dying Gleam of the Sun Eternal is my favorite piece from this release as it explores the atmospheric side of black metal, with some great tremolo riffs and simple, precise drumming. It doesn't last for seven hours, like a typical Krallice song, so Asperger's hipsters will feel quite disappointed, but I'm quite happy with this song.

My only other complaint with Winter is that it's too damn short and a little too... tame. I have the feeling these guys aren't giving us their best yet. Hopefully, they will unleash their inner beasts for their full-length album (you are planning on a full-length album, right, guys?) and will take everyone by surprise. The demo is certainly promising enough.

Also, Dead River Runs Dry are cool dudes and are offering Winter for free, so all of you ungrateful maggots better buy them a beer or other beverage of their choice. And go like them on their Facebook page. They have fewer likes than us, which is all sorts of wrong.

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