Kaktus has been together under various forms and names for more than a couple of years. Now that their line-up and style has seemingly stabilized, these young men have decided to release their debut demo. The band's music is somewhere between modern melodic metal and thrash metal, with some influence from death metal and more oldschool-style expression.
The first track begins blasting without any hesitation. It takes quite a while to really grasp this one as it has so much variation: it's mostly some short-ish thrashy riffs played above mid-tempo and with a good melodic touch, and a couple of times the track goes into simpler, faster and more aggressive expression. There's a quite nice solo in it's end, and there's also some well imbued blastbeats in it's end and beginning to emphasize the climaxes. It might not sound like much when written, but the song really goes through a lot during it's three and a half minutes of highly melodic aggression.
Song two is five whole minutes long, and features pretty much the same elements but with a quite much darker feel. The song progresses and varies more slowly and is riff-wise a bit simpler than it's predecessor - worry not though, as even though the riffs are seemingly simpler they have a greater deal of emotion in them. The song's high and low points are more clearly noticeable, so despite it's darker and quite a bit less energetic and aggressive feel it has a great deal of appeal. It's lenght does it wonders too, the song gets to build up well and the band has the time to throw in a fittingly dark solo, which is again imbued well. The song gives the demo a really natural end, and one that makes you want to play it again, too.
Sound-wise the demo is of good quality. The guitars have the thrashy edge and mass that they need while still sounding very clear, and the drums create a very vivid and interesting backbone to the songs and the rather clean sounds show all their variation nicely. The mushy bass sound could be better though, as now it's riffs are a bit too hard to make out and thus they don't add much to the songs. The gruff growling vocals have clearly become better with time and even have some appeal by now, but the singer's age still somewhat shows through them. A bit more variation and energy would be good, but the vocals are rather decent as-is, too. The vocal patterns also suit the songs well. Shortly: it's all very, very good for a demo, and the musicians seem rather talented - especially when considering their ages.
The demo might be short, but it's packed with good energy and great compositional ideas that make sure that it doesn't sound like it. The songs go forward with a really nice flow, and it seems like the band has rehearsed these songs really well and know how they should be played. They seem to have a good idea of what kind of songs they want to make and play, but they don't have their own exact style yet; still, the whole is very refined for a first demo, and the group seems to have the energy and enthusiasm to go forward. If you're into melodic thrash- or death metal, keep an eye on this band. Do also note that they're planning on making an EP of wholly new songs this summer, so you don't have to settle for just this demo for long.