I’ve been a fan since I first heard their demo tape Souldead several years back, I was greatly impressed by their tight sound, brutality, technicality and melody. I was even further impressed by their first full-length release Perpetual Mockery, which had greater production and catchier songs. The band soon began working on new material and made a rough garage recording which the guitarist, David Bugeja, sent my way for an opinion and I was completely blown away by the new song, "Paramnesic Dreams". Unfortunately, before the band was done recording new material they parted ways with Marcel Scalpello, who just happened to be one of my favorite vocalists due to his impressive range and vocal patterns. The band replaced him with newcomer Lawrence ‘Wenzu’ Joyce, who I was told was a more brutal and suitable vocalist for the band, I was skeptical, but remained optimistic. Upon listening to the promo tape my optimism quickly turned to utter disappointment. The vocals have changed completely, gone is the vocal range and great patternings, replaced with ‘Butchered At Birth‘-style vocals, Wenzu’s vocal patterns are terrible, often seeming to lag far behind or far ahead the music with no variation what-so-ever, the only breaks in monotony are the shrieks of bassist David Cachia, who, in my opinion, sounds far more competent a vocalist than their leadman Wenzu. Opening the promo is the aforementioned "Paramnesic Dream", the song had changed a fair bit from the early recording I’d heard, the track is almost ruined by Wenzu’s poor performance and is surprisingly weak compared to their original garage recording. Following this track is a follow-up to the final, and most brutal, track from Perpetual Mockery, "Suffer In Silence", entitled "Suffer Some More". From this point on it’s apparent the band has changed their music style drastically, the melody and most of the technicality is gone, replaced with the typical New York brutal death metal-style mixed with flashes of early Cannibal Corpse. The song itself is rather bland and lacks the groove and sickness which made the original so popular. The drumming of Chris Brincat is solid, as usual, however seems to lack the flair it once did as he tends to stick with more traditional drum beats. "Transmutation Of Veracity" has a horrible opening, with poor drum patterns and eventually leads into that typical NY sounding jump groove, with several out-of-place solos cluttered in the rubble. "Extortion Of Benevolence" is pretty much a continuation of the previous track with horrible vocal patterns strewn all about, the groove sections near the beginning of the track are played well and flow well, however the slow sections are pretty awful. The demo ends with "Resurgence Of Oblivion", which basically just continues on with the same sound and groove with very little variation from the previous tracks for the most part, the slower sections show a great deal of promise, however the vocals, again, put a huge blemish on the song as a whole. While I may be good friends with a couple of the band members, I must say this was by far the most disappointing follow-up I’ve heard since Cannibal Corpse’s Vile a few years back. It’s amazing how much a band can change with the departure of a vocalist, and with Beheaded it made a huge difference. The vocals are very brutal, however the patterns are the worst I’ve ever heard, Wenzu seems to be growling along with a song that’s only in his head, because he very rarely sings with the pattern of the songs which causes a lot of problems. I think the band should get Cachia more involved vocally to add more variety to the bland monotone gurgles of Wenzu, and the band as a whole should stop trying to fit into the NY sound, because it’s just not working for them. Compared to prior Beheaded material I’d say it’s poor, within the NY groove-death sound they’re below average, at best. It’s merely a promo and was recorded in only three days with very little time to spend on production and mixing, but if this is the route they plan to take, musically, for the future, I don’t expect them to make much of an impact in the scene at all. A bad recording from a great band with "Paramnesic Dreams" being the only strong track out of five songs. Written By: Teufel