From Eastern Finland, Kuopio, comes Shade Empire. In 2001 this 5-piece band recorded their 2nd effort, called 'Daemon'. The band had worked about 3 years up to this point and this was created as their ticket for a deal with a record label.

Shade Empire's blackish melodic metal was surfing on the tide. Roaring guitars playing hammering or tremolo picked riffs, tinkling/spacey/piano synthesizer work is familiar from the era, ugly shrieked vocals on otherwise quite melodic music, and fast and brutal drumming to pummel a listener. Shade Empire was pretty much operating on the same field as Finnish bands Darkwoods My Betrothed, Thyestean Feast and Faerghail, and from Norway, one Dimmu Borgir, at least to some extent.

'Daemon', the song, is definitely the best one of this bunch, because it is varying and its parts have been welded together seamlessly. It's familiar up to four minute mark, where the band present somewhat 1980's / 1990's style computer game music dragged into metal music frame. The second track sounds very Finnish for sure, and prety darn close to Eternal Tears Of Sorrow. It's more straightforward when compared to the opener, but still it doesn't stagnate. Its melodiousness varies between jolly and melancholic. Yeah, that's how it had became... The closer is more aggressive one, some times driven with blast beats, but still with same qualities as the two previous songs. There's a good drive throughout the music, even if it's familiar.

It sounds like this demo was made with time: It sounds balanced and punchy, and there are even some vocal overlaps and mingling with tones and effects. There are a few small playing mistakes, but nothing that could easily be spotted. So this is one well practised and recorded effort.

Shade Empire's melodic branch of black metal showed how to make this style of metal hard-hitting and not wimpy at all. By the way, this contains no female vocals... They had all the required elements to be in the top league of this genre, but alas, it wasn't time for that quite as yet.

Reviewed by Lane
07/28/2015 19:29