Blakk Market - Hateful Affection

This demo CD has two original songs, but it also includes a video, photos, and two “pre-production” MP3’s. The band also sent a paper bio with full-color photos along with another CD containing two MP3’s, a cover of Anthrax’s “Indians” and another “pre-production” track. I don’t know why the band calls these other tracks “pre-production” instead of “demos.” Since some of this stuff is newer, and the actual demo is three years old, I’ll treat this all as one entity.

However, I’ve never gotten a submission with this high an extra stuff to music ratio. The demo comes with a logo of the guitar company sponsoring the band, for crying out loud. It’s good to be serious about the business of being a band, but I can’t help but feel that Blakk Market is letting that overshadow its music.

As for that aspect, this Brazilian band does competent melodic thrash/death metal. The somewhat raw recording hinders the force of the material, and the band isn’t as tight as it could be. The guitarists can play, though, busting out with fluent harmonies, and the drumming has some interesting accents. The vocals are thin, but perhaps that’s because they’re low in the mix. Better production, especially with more low end, would help the band, as well as some good old-fashioned woodshedding to weld it into more of a sonic unit.

The Anthrax cover really puts things in perspective, as the songwriting of “Indians” is much stronger than the rest of this demo. It has catchy riffs and choruses, coherent transitions, and a sense of identity and drive that Blakk Market’s songs don’t have yet. The band has good taste, at least, and hopefully it can learn from this example. Its newest track, “Nova,” begins with a chord progression so Lacuna Coil-ish that at first I thought it was a cover, too. And what are those syrupy keyboards doing in the mix? This band has the skills to do what it wants; it just has to figure out what that is.