Under the Shadows...
Behold... the Eve of Conclusion
Black
Drone
Decrepit

Fear
For Death Holds No Dreams
Wormhole Through the Decay of Time
Paradeigma
Benediction
Stained Shadow Reverie
Cadere

Another new artist to these ears. Another great name. Not quite in the class of Nazi UFO Commander but damn close. This double CD release, limited to 500 copies, captures on CD1 all previous cassette recordings in their original form, with CD2 being made up of unreleased studio recordings. Vomit Orchestra is the work of an artist by the name of Demiurge, with contributions with some other likeminded folk. I don’t have a press release for this copy, seeing as how I bought it, so if details be scant… so be it. Anyway… too much information isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Best stay mysterious. Keep people guessing and all that.

Demiurge is another artist working within the spectre of dark ambient music… kind of. Only his take on the subject is slightly different. For a start he bungs in the odd guitar lick here and there, quite a lot actually, which is different and fairly invigorating, when its successful, to say the least. Then there’s loads of melody, which makes reoccurring appearances, which are gratefully received. Vocally he mucks around with his voice so it sounds like he’s singing through a bowel of sludge… a sound normally associated with death metal freaks everywhere. He’s not afraid to experiment with sound by utilising various effects / instruments and generally mucking around with them in highly innovative and unusual ways. Plus he sounds eerily like MZ.412 in places… which is a very high recommendation.

Then again… he uses a lot of the trademark dark ambient ingredients. Samples… check. Claustrophobic electronics… check. Bells tolling… check. Heavy percussion…. check. But to call it a dark ambient recording isn’t telling the full story. In many ways "Macabre Paradigm" is a cross over ambient / experimental / metal recording. A hybrid of these genres, then, would be closer to the mark. And funnily enough it works. Sure… over the two discs and 12 tracks there’s the odd duff one here and there, which loses its way a little, but generally I kind of took to this guys vision. There’s a lot more positives than negatives which counts for a hell of lot.

Therefore "Macabre Paradigm (Dayside and Nightside Reveries)" is not your run of the mill, boring as shit on a hot day, dark ambient release. I sort of suspect that Demiurge also has a metal band of some type on the go when hearing some of the pieces on here… but I’ll probably never find out if that is the case or not. Does it matter anyway? Not really. By not following the crowd and taking the safe musical route he’s released a recording that comes as a genuine pleasant surprise. And we all like pleasant surprises don’t we?

ANM