SIRUS
A weighty demo this in every sense, clocking at nine tracks and involving much metal noisemongery. With hard, rumbling riffage and whispered poetical vocal nastiness the order of the day, and titles like ‘Painting The Mist’ and ‘Tyui Ihg Ores’ (possibly a pagan spell that reduces unappreciative reviewers to frogs) you get the gist of Sirus: a goth band in metal clothing. They’ve possibly been listening to Nine Inch Nails and Tool and for a while at least it’s not bad at all. The problem is that they just keep pounding away without any variety and since you can’t hear the voice much it just becomes a blizzard of riffage: pleasantly unpleasant noise, but that’s all. It doubtless all makes far more sense turned up to 11 in a cramped venue after several snakebites but here it’s goth-metal elevator musak (“Level 7, the eternal fires of Hell! Going down…”). And it’s given Pertwee the Nightshift cat a bit of a headache. Ribbit, ribbit.