It has been released more than four months ago in mean time, this vinyl-effort, but since I did receive this stuff only recently, and for this material is oh-so jummie… Besides, it’s stuff provided via Invictus Productions, and who am I to ignore this superior label…
ZOM hail from Ireland and Invictus Productions’ version of Demo MMXI is the ‘optimally re-mastered’ vinyl-edition of the original demonstrational recording (initially released untitled, without any Latin-based release date), including a bonus track. In mean time, the trio recorded and released another demo and a 7”EP too, by the way.
Demo MMXI brings, like so much stuff kindly provided to us by Invictus and comparable labels, a tribute to the Old School, i.e. the Eighties and earliest Nineties. The Proto-Death Metal of ZOM comes with a dark, morbid atmosphere and a sulphuric, anti-fashioned sound, adding aspects from the Horror, Black, Doom-Death, Blast and Thrash Metal scene. Autopsy, Goatlord, Necrovore, Necrophagia, Bestial Warlust, Obscurity, Mayhem, Conqueror, Messiah, Blasphemy, Asphyx, Unleashed, Incubus and Morgoth, it’s just an idea that came to my mind to have any reference to this dated yet still active stuff. It combines faster and blasphemous parts, occult excerpts, elemental hyper-death glory, and slightly epic tradition, yet with one mutual aspect: the Glory and Victory of the Past.
Besides, the intermezzos, considered like soundtrack-excerpts or intros, are a great addition to the piercing, rhythmic and power-driven main parts, and since this band slightly lacks of variation within its tracks (except for the speed, that differs from ultra-slow over mid-tempo to brutally kinetic), this is a positive element that will influence my final score. At the other hand, this score will be influenced as well by the sound, which is way beyond acceptability. I do appreciate a rough, unpolished production, but in this recording’s case, it’s beneath contempt. ‘remastered for optimum analog sound’ is what the bio says (and I sort of repeated it in one of the first paragraphs of this review), but that is like faeces of a male bovine (bull’s shit indeed).