Cabaret for Bereaved

Cabaret for Bereaved - Demo 95
Self-Released, 1995
Genre: Black Metal

1. Intro (Immortal Loyalness)
2. On Cold Wings
3. Ice Floe is Sinking
4. Seeds for Nothing
5. Candle Burns in Storm
6. Pahuuden Kuolema
7. King has Won
8. The Calling
9. Freezing Day
10. The Undead






I picked this up solely based on the fact that Gaamalzagoth performed vocals on this. I really didn't know what to expect from this, but I can't say this is really my style of Black Metal. Cabaret for Bereaved bring us ten songs heavily laden with synth, making this more of an Ambient Black Metal type of release. I wonder if there was any influence from the early Blut aus Nord realm, because some of these keyboard approaches seem similar.

The demo is definitely in the lo-fi spectrum of the genre, but the music isn't fast. In fact, the music is quite slow to mid-paced for the most part. It's actually quite poorly performed as well. There are missed hits and off-time parts with the drums. The guitar work sort of fumbles around and feels off at times. Sometimes the keyboards work and at other times they don't. There's a time in "Ice Floe is Sinking" where it's just keyboard and drums, which sounds very bad. I think the intent was a dark and brooding atmosphere, which is only high-lighted by the Doom styled pacing. But the poor instrumentation makes this nearly unlistenable. The attempt at a solo in "Pahuuden Kuolema", is just off-putting. "The Calling" is atrocious. It's an all Ambient styled track with mostly feedback and samples being played over and over again. It doesn't even make sense in the context of the rest of the music. Even Gaamalzagoth's vocal performance is a bit different. Granted, it does happen to fit the music. He sticks to a rather low-key performance with a more talking/rasp approach to the vocals. This is quite different from his intense wails during the Moonblood recordings.

I don't think I can recommend this demo to anyone. Unless you're extremely into that lo-fi Black Metal style and find sloppy instrumentation endearing? There are times when the style works, but it's not enough to really draw me in. Makes sense that this is a long forgotten demo from the early days. The main musician p. Mölsä doesn't seem to have gone on to do anything else after this, so that's another reason for this being lost to history.