Just like the ancient god Janus, Italy’s Trifixion choose to have two faces on their Burning the Throne release. Trifixion two-faced nature, however, is less bright and dark, but more so intriguing and objectionable, in the ears of this reviewer.

Trifixion, and I think intentionally so, are caught between 90s American death metal and lifeless modern black metal sweeping Europe nowadays. These two faces continue to interchange all throughout the demo, neither getting the upper hand, leaving the “this could have been so much more” feeling.

After the angel-heathen choir and ritualistic intro of The End Begins and brutal blastbeat many times heard before Marduk inspired I See I was ready to write Trifixion off, without getting in too deep on Burning the Throne. Luckily the guitar intro on Dead Inside, that Suffocation and Morbid Angel familiar guitar slinging saved the day and kept my interest burning. On and off, the duality continued. Pretty good thrashing flowing with melody on Theater of Blood was overtaken by the blastbeat sameness again, and cool Pestilence moments on Forced by Flesh are buried by the terrible vocal choices.

It is rare that vocals, in an extreme metal album anyway, play a decisive role for me, but Trifixion is an exception. No one expects Pavarotti or even clean singing here, but let’s just compare tempered growls on Reality We Know is a Lie with the rest of the maniacal screaming on Burning the Throne. Frankly, I did not even imagine the band would try the growls. Why would they, if they thought what vocalist Krom was doing the rest of the way goes in toe with their music? In fact, maniacal screaming is OK, as long as it is varied. Most of the time the vocals on the demo are one-note top-of-the-lungs hysterical psychopath yelps, looking possibly in the direction of Anaal Natrakh and totally missing the point. I almost waited for instrumental moments on Burning the Throne, drummer Matless tightness and excellent guitar technicality of Fudo. Whether I liked the blackened blastbeat or not, it surprised me how quite varied songs (with temporary brooding moments) can be set back so much by monotonous vocals.

You can try Burning the Throne and see which side of Trifixion you like better yourself.