Demo Spotlight: Goodbye, Halcyon Days by Lament CA

 

By Ryan Germ
I wasn’t planning on writing anymore articles, just doing videos from now on. But I was playing some Football Manager today letting Spotify shuffle play. Then I heard this song by this band called Lament. It blew me away. It was super 2000’s metalcore but the good kind without the overproduced cleans, and ever since Balmora dropped a god awful record, and then had their guitarist outed as a predator I’ve been waiting for a band to fill that void. So I haven’t heard any songs beyond the title track so I’m going into this only slightly less blind than you dear reader. Now let’s dive in.


The first track is called Memories of Yesterday and 10 seconds in they have my attention with these atmospheric leads. It goes into a side to side part with vocals that kind of remind me of Timmy from The S.E.T. Then it goes into a fuckin nasty breakdown. Then the drums switch onto the hat and I love that shit. Dueling vocals go into the next part as a transition into this fucking great riff for the fast part. The drums go half time to give it some moshyness. The drums cut out and a menacing tough guy riff plays, then hits on the hats follow it and it launches you into a slow moshy breakdown. It goes into this part where normal 00’s style metalcore bands would have some cleans but Lament gives us some desperate sounding screams over some least bots. Then it goes into this cool lead over the hats. Next a pummeling double pedal just nails you over some chanty gang vocals. Then it goes to a dancey but moshy part. After that everything cuts out and a ride bell signals the big breakdown to end the track. Hell yeah.


The next song is Artifice. It starts with a count off and a semi melodic lead alongside chugging guitars. The pattern the drums have are a very moshy one. The drums switch to the crash and we switch to another riff. That leads into a panic chord heavy breakdown which I love. Everything cuts out and a slower version from the lead at the beginning plays like you just survived the worlds shortest war. The second guitar harmonizes that lead with the first over a spoken word part. The leads continue after the spoken word part and then goes into a mosh part. Everything rings out before a side to side and a sample drops you into a fucking killer breakdown to end that song off.


The final song is the only one I heard before this and the opening riff kind of sounds like a more metallic version of a Holy Blade song. So that Cali sound is really peering through. It goes into a two step part and then a faster punky part after that. Then it goes into a mosh part followed by a side to side and spoken word combo to go into another breakdown. It goes back to the well with that 2 step part from the beginning and a slightly different punky part. Everything cuts out and you get one last breakdown to end off the demo. Very good demo I’m very excited to see what’s next for this band. They rip hard as fuck.

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