### Ash The Sky: Demo

#### 19/07/12 || Averatu

When you scroll down to the bottom of this page, you’ll find the information section listing the band’s website, members, shoe sizes. This information, contrary to popular belief, does not just appear by the magic of the interwebs, no mystical data fairies put it there at night while we’re sleeping. Some asshole has to actually look up the damned band’s info and use his phenomenal mousing, and typing, and keyboard short-cut skills to put it there. In this case the chocolate starfish is me.

And in this case I feel the band has treated me as my analogy, the schwincster. They took a big dump and forgot to flush, and I was left to figure out what the fuck they’re on about. When I consult Google The Overlord, he points me to various places this band has a web presence. This is where the frustration stars, none of these places tell the same story, even the tracks I received are inconsistent. It’s listed as UK band Ask the Sky, and in other sites list it as US band Ash the Sky, same songs, same logo. Is it Mike or Mik Felder? How much time do I waste sorting this out? At this point I don’t give a flying fuck, because the bios are all incoherent irrelevant crap about the glory days of the nineties or something, written all in capitals. I don’t do capitals baby, they give me a migraine. And if you are going to capitally condescend, I’m not going to participate.

Moving on, I can finally get to the music. There is no mention of a drummer to be wrestled from the pile of steaming crud that is this bands online promo material (see what I did there), so I’ll assume mister drum machine will suffice. Mister drum machine does a sterling job, probably under Mik’s direction, I couldn’t tell. Vocalist? You tell me, its probably Mik again. The vocals are very over processed, so if they where going for an industrial feel it would work. But to me it seems more likely Mik could not find a decent vocalist, and he thus decided to do the phlegm gargling himself, and when the instruments fall away at 2 minutes and 16 seconds of ‘‘Let freedom ring’‘ the lone vocals in all their glory sound like two tracks of heavily compressed phlegm gargling with some distortion to add some fry, exactly what I sound like when I squeeze imaginary testicles to express inner pain aka, sing along to Dark Funeral in the shower(well, try at least). In light of this I don’t see how they’ll manage to pull any of this off live. The guitar playing is pretty solid, interesting melodic solos, riffs and progressions that would not be out of place on a Lamb of God or derivative band’s album

So now that I’ve calmed down a bit and got that off my chest, the songs are not half bad for American style core metal, there is enough texture and movement between the different parts to keep me interested. This demo does convey a solid idea of the bands/man’s abilities and intention, now they/he needs the other pieces of the band puzzle, and coherent promo that does not leave viewers feeling insulted. If your bag is Daath/LoG/Devil Driver/Pantera, then please have yourself another slice, but nothing really sets them apart from all the other bands coming out of Texas, or Berkeley, or where ever it is that Americans make this stuff.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: none
- Website: Ash The Sky Reverbnation
- Band
- Mike Felder: vocals and guitar
- Chris Morgan: bass

- Tracklist
- 01. Let freedom ring
- 02. No mercy
- 03. Conflict