Band's List Atmospheric Black Filsufatia Buried Beneath & Forgotten

My impression of Malaysian extreme metal has always leaned more towards the brutal and thrashy end of the spectrum, with bands like Mantak and Crown ov Horns being the names that come off the top of my head immediately. However, aside these bands that play a more aggressive form of music lies bands like Filsufatia, playing a more depressive and melancholic style of black metal. Buried Beneath & Forgotten is the very first material that I hear from the band, the 8th release in 6 years, and the band's discipline in writing music is evident, with at least 1 release per year.

And the music here is excellent as well, with this release seeing the band sticking to an instrumental format, with only the guitars, drums and a piano that acts as the main instrument that drives the music of the band forward. Opening track Buried Beneath & Forgotten begins with a melancholic and emotional sounding piano, which provides the main melody for the track. The drums and the extremely trebly and raw guitar soon come in, but seem to act only as background instruments, creating an atmosphere of depression and desolation around the piano line. However, soon band mastermind Deep gets some time to show off his skills with a short lead guitar section, and he does so with the same air of hopelessness in the melodies that he pulls out from his instrument.

Also, while songs like Through the Deep contain riffs that are repetitive, these do not end up boring the listener, and instead helps in keeping up the mood and atmosphere that has been set up with opening track Buried Beneath & Forgotten. Perhaps another reason for the ability to keep listeners enchanted is the relatively short track lengths, with the band choosing not to overdo things through droning on and on, and this is certainly a good move as well. Between Life and Lifeless also sees Deep introducing some acoustic guitar moments, and this helps in adding some fresh sounds in this very short demo.

Sticking true to the spirit of traditional black metal, the production quality of the demo is extremely raw, and this certainly works to the benefit of the band, though listeners who are not accustomed to such unpolished production could take some time to get used to it. The production also helps in making the guitars somewhat sound more haunting, especially with the lead guitars on tracks like Through the Deep. At the same time though, the programmed drums sounded almost artificial and this certainly affected the enjoyment of the release slightly, though overall, this is a rather insignificant issue, making this demo an (ironically) entertaining one.