Have you ever heard an album or artist that you know has potential, that you believe in the music they are doing but it´s obvious that time and growth are required for their music to actually make an impact on you? Well if you have, then you will understand how I feel about this record and this band.

Austria´s Systematic Soul Deadening has potential, a very good idea and work ethic goes into this debut, only a demo I might add; with a very nice and well balanced mix of black and hardcore sounds, the demo presents a band with a new approach to some very watered down genres. But if we qualify albums based only on clever ideas then we could never really give Cannibal Corpse a good grade! The problem with Ravaging Madness is the forced introduction of clean vocals and the lack of excitement the albums spews after their first three songs are played.

Perhaps my biggest problem with the demo is the clean vocals; I’m not one of those dumb purists that can’t understand the need, beauty and necessity of introducing some clean, soft words into a song, to the contrary I like some diversity on my metal, but if you are going to put some clean segments on your songs, you have to be absolutely sure of two things, one and the most important of them, that the segment makes sense, that the inclusion of such vocal melodies are required or serve a purpose, something that maybe only becomes true in the fourth track “Feel me” a song that due to its almost “ballad” feel craves for some good melodic voices; but in the first three songs (the best on the demo by the way) the insertion of such vocals is forced, artificial, and to come to that second point on what a melodic vocal segment needs, the clean vocals need to sound good, and in those early songs they don’t, they sound awful.

Ravaging Madness has that which makes any metal album be consider for a second or third listen, good catchy riffs, not many, not incredible, but they are there, making the entire experience tolerable and hopeful, seen how this guys can actually come up with new an interesting ways of putting some sharp and thrashy riffs into a song. Also and it’s worth mentioning, the black shrieks that are spew are pretty decent and give the songs a lot more strength as they blend perfectly with the hardcore style of structuring the songs; to sum it up, decent debut, just loose the clean vocals or find someone else to do them.