 Negligence
- "Demo, EP" self-produced 2004 This is a moment we were all dying for, at least here in Slovenia! And the rest of you beware!!! Four songs finally found a place on this EP simply called "Demo". Bend delivers over 20 minutes of material and a lot of music! Opening with Fightback immediately starts to speak for itself. It truly sounds encouraging right from first beat in terms: "You see, there is still hope for thrashback!" I mean real thrash with superb sense for musical arrangements full of excellent changes, coupled with nice portion of harmonies and a pure Bible of guitar soloing. For quick orientation let us mention Forbidden. Firing from all machine guns merciless, with full force. Aggressive shredding of guitars will surely make a day for you! Negligence has two equal guitarists that offers spine tingling riffs fired directly from guts and imaginative soloing divided into more lead breaks. So we are dealing with guitar twins like great old ones Tipton/Downing, Holt/Honoult or Peterson/Scolnick are. Not only fuckin' good, but also fuckin' imaginative, I mean solos are heart of Negligence. From head to its feet, everything is crafted with great care and pedantry, which proves that true heart and love to music is present on every step they take. Just listen to this perfection in Thrust, a song of pure aural intensity. Riffs are fluidly running one into another. Band doesn't lose even a sparkle of huge dynamics while constantly switching between all those motives and fantastic "not from this world" soloing of both guitars. Everything is laid down fluid as only it can be. Sound is garaged and hellish alive. I know they are not satisfied with it, but sound is nasty, angry and non-compromised as it should be for music they offer. Warmachine opens with evilized double twin harmonies of classic Forbidden or Heathen trademarks. Bass line has that tremendous "Exodus" steel sound of special sound depths, which makes fantastic contrast in whole band's sound and is especially remarkable in this song. Rhythm line is equally strong and expressive as front line of both guitars and this brings great balance inside music and pictures a stark and very expressive contrasts. They take it fast as a shark. Genuine drum murdering blisters inside bridges and brings in band's musical expression a certain qualities that many bands can only dream about. Chemistry between all musicians bloody works here! Performances of four musicians result in great self-amplifying effect of real shivering atmosphere, especially at instrumental passages of a songs. Unfortunately here is fifth article that does not allow this band to take a full breath. What I find are vocals that somehow do not fit in. Vocal lines (all in English language) are crafted very well, but performed without guts. Vocalist holds to the singing sequence where he is the strongest, but little vocal deviations with ups and downs from this basic line has been made. Also singing is very weak, mainly from throat, without real guts, and therefore felts out to be quite boring, which somehow kills the strong creative nucleus, blistering voltage and great spirit of the rest of a band. Band tried to fix this problem with addition of extra background vocal lines and partly solved that problem. As I said, Negligence are so well technically skilled, having already built strong self commitment, determination and confidence for their future goals that they need right from the start a equally strong and expressive singer as for example Russ Anderson, James Rivera, Steve "Zetro" Souza or Tim "Ripper" Owens are. And I am not joking! When you'll hear Negligence you'll be amazed and truly enchanted, because this is what metal is all about. Lovers of Exodus and stuffs like Helstar, Forbidden, Heathen, Testament, Agent Steel, welcome home. Negligence are taking no shit! They came to deliver you a real punch right between the eyes. What is so special with Negligence? With amazing playing and songwriting talents they are also not afraid to assemble and perform all their stuff with listening to voices in their hearts, while many younger metal acts forgot about meanings of living the metal rock culture long ago. With such gutsy power of will, nothing can stop Negligence! I will use a part of a verse from their song Thrust: "Let it last!"
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