Band:	Aeons Of Old
Album:	Nemesis
Style:	Black metal, Death metal
Release date:	2004

01. Howl Of Despair
02. The Outsider
03. Dreamwork

Aeons Of Old comes from Belgium, and no they are not inspired by Aborted (for once). Their music doesn't sound Belgian at all, the influence here has to be sought in Scandinavia. Over the three songs and approximately eleven minutes of this demo, you hear a tribute to the great Swedish bands. The ghost of At The Gates is omnipresent, this is pretty obvious since the intro of the first song 'Howl Of Despair'. I won't criticize, they could have chosen a worst model.

The good thing is that like a lot of young bands that decided to play melodic death metal, Aeons Of Old don't just copy stupidly the old recipes, but they add something else taken from the American brutal death scene, I mean these flashy accelerations full of more-than-deep growlings. This is a mix I find quite satisfying. These guys, overall, are good musicians, they obviously know how to write catchy riffs and more atmospheric breaks like in the middle of the angry 'The Outsider', some clean guitars calm down the whole thing. The vocals are really good as well, between black metal screams and death growlings.

Of course, this is a demo, there are some flaws. First, the cover is horrible, looks as if my 10-year old cousin wanted to draw something to scare his little sister. For once they included the lyrics with the booklet though, which is a good thing. The main thing that reduces the pleasure we sure have while listening to 'Nemesis' is the very poor production. The guitars are really clear, but they have no power, they sound flat. A death metal album has to have a wall of guitars, otherwise it sounds cheap. The screams have been mixed too much behind the rest, and consequently you just hardly hear them most of the time. Last thing: guys, seriously, find yourselves a drummer, the beat box doesn't fit at all in these songs...

Anyway, I won't be too harsh with Aeons Of Old because they show great abilities overall, this demo witnesses that with some time, a bit of work and lots of money they could release something really good.