Andras are relatively infamous within the German Black Metal scene for various reasons. Most prominent of all would be their ties with the equally infamous label Last Episode, which has earned its reputation for blissfully gracing the markets with indispensable artists such as Mystic Circle or Eisregen, and with its quality outputs even managed to lead Kanwulf of Nargaroth to dedicate a song to their honour, simply named "F**k Off Last Episode". Another feature that gained Andras parts of their negative reputation (which is expressed by the scene in ways ranging from scorn to amusement) is found in their "unusual" vocal performance, which more or less sounds like a mixture between a hideously disturbing choking-noise and the characteristic voice of Walt Disney's most widely recognized feathered superstar. And finally, last, but not least, there is the cheese. And no, Andras aren't any kind of "Gothic Black Metal", no greasy synth carpets or wailing choirs, not that kind of cheese, but the kind you find in bands like Manowar. Pompous three chord riffs over drums just trying a bit too hard to sound "climactic", swords and warriors here and there, and how everything was just so damn great hundreds or thousands of years ago, when men were still strong et cetera, et cetera... Of course with all the "narrative" song structures all going through the same formula of soft part vs hard part, slow part vs fast part, a bridge in there, and whoosh we have written another song. Translate that whole idea to Black Metal, with the aforementioned vocal style, occasional faster drums (but never excessively fast blastbeats) and a minimum touch of dark-ish Black Metal type of riffing, and you basically have the sound of an Andras album in a nutshell.

Now, this isn't an Andras album, this is their demo, and that gives all this its special twist. To go for the most obvious, this demo was recorded before the members of the band quite figured out how to keep a rhythm. Or at least how to all keep the same rhythm at the same time. This can mostly be traced back to the astonishingly sloppy drumming, most notably its horrendously (and continuously) messed-up fills. If I added up every minute of my life that I have been sitting behind a drumkit, I'd probably end up around as little as 72 hours total, and I can easily play everything I hear on this album, that's how amateurish it really is.

But there are other, more subtle differences between this demo and Andras' later works, and here is where the whole affair gets more interesting. The production of this release is not only surprisingly good for a band's first demo - crisp, crunchy, stomping, but abrasive and spiteful in the Black Metal production style we have all come to love from Norwegian bands - but it also beats that of all the band's later efforts on whim. Without the sterilizing (this word can be understood both in the "sterile sound"-sense, as well as in the "cutting off the balls"-sense) effect of Last Episode's backing the sound of Andras actually managed to capture a piece of this raw and primal atmosphere that makes Black Metal what Black Metal is. And when seen in this context suddenly the quality of the drumming makes sense in that it fits perfectly into this soon forgotten raw Black Metal side of Andras.

Now here is where the pieces finally fit together, because when put into this raw Black Metal dress, suddenly the whole style of Andras begins to feel like something. The comparison to their later works shows that pretending to be a Black Metal version of Manowar, and just singing of swords and warriors and whatnot cannot succeed on its own, but with the extra bonus of feral, chaotic and primordial spirit the outside circumstances of these demos brought, the spirit of the idea behind it begins to unfold upon the listener, and opens itself for one to dive into the world they tried to create ever since, but kept failing through the whole of the later part of their career. So, for reasons thoroughly described, this might forever remain a hidden gem in the more suspicious parts of the German Black Metal scene, but one always worth checking out for everyone unfamiliar with this recording.

Recommended: Yes

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