First demo for British Columbia's Artep, in anticipation of the release of their first album. Artep's style is furious mid to fast paced Black Metal with some demented vocal work. The vocals sound like they are reaching out to grab you and pull you into the depths of hell - and that's not counting the out-of-this-world hellish scream at the end of the second track, "Antichrist". The keyboards are rather discreet, save for the intro track, which is more of an atmospheric style than the rest. Crunchy, aggressive guitar work is married with sometimes subtle (and not so subtle) hints of melody, when we're not served a simple but effective all-guns-blazing attack of late 90s Scandinavian-style fast guitars and drums that take no prisoners. Throw in a few heavy doom-ish passages as well as the almost mandatory little melancholic interludes here and there, and you get a good dose of variety for such a short release. A demo should showcase a band's abilities, and this one does this very well.y

Overall, an impressive demo of more or less generic, but very well executed Black Metal that will make you crave for more. A full album filled with material of this quality should get the underground talking about Artep next year.