Italy's SavinGraces are a totally new acquaintance to me. This is the bands third demo, though.

SavinGraces are one of those bands, whose music is hard to be pinned down clearly. Basis of the band's metal is perhaps death metal. There's thrash, dark, gothic and even some electro influences on 'Evilution'. Despite all the influences, SavinGraces have created tight songs, that are based on straight rhythms, usually heavy guitar riffs, melodic passages and bleepy EBM synthesizers, and covered with throat ripping growled or screamed death metal vocals. One band using similar elements nowadays are Dark Tranquillity, but SavinGraces isn't close to Swedish legends. SavinGraces are clearly heading to create music, that sounds themselves. They are about halfway there. Songs are quite catchy, but almost all of them seem to have way too tinkling and toyish synths for my liking. Riffing is competent throughout the demo.

The reason I didn't mention the rhythm section previously is because of a lame production job, which is inferior to many a demo recording in nowadays' standards. Done by the band themselves, the sound is seriously lacking in all departments: balancing, power and overall quality. Only the guitar has some power, but that's not enough, since the drums have almost none. The instruments do not fit together, all of them sound like they're from a different record. I think the players' skills aren't shown to the maximum due to the bad sound. Booklet is simple, but professionally printed.

The band have some good ideas, which they haven't been able to demonstrate well because of the bad production. The guitar riffs are the biggest plus side, then some okay songwriting. 'S.E.L.' and some other songs would sound huge with good sound.

Rating: 5- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/23/2004 15:22