From Israel comes this peculiar demo that seems to derive inspiration from Greek mythology. In that ancient lore, the Erebus of the title was a motherless god associated with darkness, incest and dread. He was said to be the son of Chaos, brother of Gaia and father of Cer, goddess of death, and Charon, who carried the dead towards the netherworld. Before you start dozing off, the point I’m trying to make here is that one already gets the feeling that the music is dark and foreboding before ‘play’ is even pressed.

Sure enough the style of Ekho seems strongly linked with Black Metal but it also tries to blend in elements of Classical Metal, amongst other genres. Within the band’s own bio, Folk Metal is also cited but I didn’t feel that that was so obvious from the music.

On listening to this CD, the first thing that strikes you is the poor quality of the demo’s sound with a muddled production and drowsy mixing. On the other hand, the musical ideas we have here are quite interesting and the musicians comprising Ekho are fairly talented with a good ear for melodies. The band also makes use of keyboards and the way they do it is great, if rather underdeveloped.