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A demo with one track which is fourteen minutes long. What would your guess be? It could be doom metal or progressive metal. The latter one is correct in this case. The Swedish band Athela began to take form in 1999 when the former Mornaland bass player Jacob Alm decided that it was time to explore more technical and progressive influences than he was able to do in the black metal band. The song starts off very nice and softly to ease the listener in towards what is to come. After a few minutes it becomes apparent that Opeth has been a major source of inspiration to these guys (and girl, the bass player is a female). Actually, almost everything here resembles Opeth. The heavy riffs are very much in the "Still Life" vein, the growling sounds similar to Mikael Åkerfeldt and the clean vocals are sung in a similar way as well. Even though Athela show these heavy resemblance to Opeth they have at least not stolen any riffs, at least that I notice, but written a pretty nice and diverse song with a whole lot going on. The growling vocals are a little weak but other than that I like this demo. They know how to write interesting music but perhaps they need to work harder on finding their own sound. Opeth fans should definitely enjoy this because there are not that many bands who not only perform progressive death metal but also do it well.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Reliance |
: 14.01
| Buy other Athela albums |
