The Demo Review:
Prowlr There are currently 1 Reviews of this Demo.
Average Rating: 2
Band Name: Prowlr
Demo Title: First Attack
Band Members: John B. Barnes - Lead Vocals, Carmine A. Grippo - Lead Guitar, Al Ziegler - Rhythm Guitar, John Cuomo - Bass Guitar, Andrew Nanna - Drums.
Location: Westchester County, NY
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    • Redwolff's Review:
    I'm sorry to say that this demo starts out with the weakest song on the disc, "Me, Myself and I", which immediately caused my shoulders to tense up in anticipation of ten more tracks like that one. Thankfully, the rest of the CD is a bit better, although there is something about the way the vocals are mixed (or maybe, not mixed) that continued to bother me throughout it. At times there is the cheap echo effect used on tracks like "God's Complaint" (although, to be fair, I guess you could expect God's voice to echo?), at other times the vocals are drowning under the guitars, like on the title track and "Winter Kill", where the vocals cannot be heard at all behind the lead guitar for the majority of the song. It's a shame, because a bad production job can really detract from the overall quality of an album, and I don't think it was done on purpose - these guys aren't black metal. Prowlr's website (by the way guys, you REALLY need to spruce up the website) refers to the band as "Alternative/Heavy Metal". I'm not sure what they mean by this, First Attack is classic early 90's bar band metal any way you slice it.

    The song structures, in general, are not very innovative, and the guitars tend to use the same chord progressions repeated ad naseum within a song until I long for anything to break the cycle - like, oops, the drummer dropping the beat. All songs are mid-tempo, more or less, and go on a bit longer than necessary. The singer really doesn't sing, he does a kind of spoken word thing without turning it into rap, thankfully. The lyrics are probably the best part of the disk, for example, the first stanza of "Winter Kill":

    Steam rising - freshly still
    Spirit rising - heaven will
    No God - over you
    Man made - through and through
    Mad lust - take me in
    Distrust - there's no sin
    Blood stream - satin snow
    Frozen corpse - I must go.

    Not bad. I guess the bottom line is this: Prowlr could use some reworking of their song structures to make their sound more original (and less high school garage band) and are in desperate need of a competant engineer for their next demo release. In general, the musicians can play their instruments and the "singer" has a compelling voice, when you can hear it. They need to act professional if they want to be professional - a slick website, well-mixed demo and strong promo packaging (something better than a typed form letter with bizarre spacing interrupting each sentence) would help the band infinitely and give them a fighting chance out there. I respect anyone who has the balls to try to make it as a musician, but I gotta call 'em as I see (hear) 'em. Sadly, I cannot rate this demo very highly.
    2 out of 5

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