Crejuvent – Pretty Demos

Crejuvent is a one-person project that recently released put forth a 20+ minute demo entitled “Pretty Demos”. Typically it is easiest to describe demo bands by attaching subgenre labels and making comparisons to other bands, but that won’t do for Crejuvent. Nevertheless, I’ll be trying anyways! At its core, the band’s music is certainly based in technical death metal, but it also offers much more. There is plenty of virtuosity showed on “Pretty Demos” (this becomes evident quite quickly in the opening track “Dualism”, and especially in the bass-guitar driven “Projection”). With that said, the demo isn’t a Brain Drill-like experience of sweeping or blasting.

Perhaps the biggest thing that separates Crejuvent from their peers is their use of clean vocals. These sections are interwoven into the music pretty seamlessly; in other words, Crejuvent doesn’t play 3 minutes of technical death metal followed by a 2-minute clean interlude. Instead, half of one riff/section of a song will be comprised of a death metal riff, whereas the next half will be more atmospheric and utilize clean vocals. This is a unique and refreshing approach because it makes the songs feel more cohesive and less like two different ideas mashed together. Although the harsh vocals are incredibly brutal, the clean vocals are quite mellow. In fact, an apt comparison would be to something like Obscura or The Faceless, where the singing doesn’t show a particularly wide range, but instead offers supporting melodies to the rest of the music.  

The best song on this demo is the aforementioned “Projection”. Fans of Atheist will especially dig this track because of the proficiency of the bass playing. For those familiar with the short-lived obscure project Sunken Colony, you can expect something similar to that band’s demo on this track. It is probably also the most straight forward track on the demo. “Epitamorph” is pretty enjoyable too because some of its riffs are more on the thrashy side of things and it can get quite aggressive at times.

Overall, “Pretty Demos” is definitely a unique experience. No one generalization or comparison can really sum up Crejuvent, so it’s best to take a listen if any of the bands mentioned above appeal to you. This demo is most likely to appeal to fans of technical death metal, but it has so much to offer that all fans of extreme metal should check it out.

Be sure to check out and like Crejuvent on Facebook!

Highlight

"Projection"

Final Rating

3.75/5 or 75%. 

Written by Scott