Artist: Burgonet
Country: Finland
Label: Self-released
Formats: Digital demo
Year: 2023
Hailing from Finland, Burgonet does not hide their love of the Norwegian Black Metal scene at all. On their first demo simply titled ‘Demo One’, the band professes their adoration for the earliest Satyricon albums ‘Dark Medieval Times’, ‘The Shadowthrone’ and to a lesser extent ‘Nemesis Divina’. In the shape of four tracks encompassing 28 minutes we are served Raw Black Metal with croaking vocals and atmospheric keyboards. The sound strongly favors these keyboards, making them stand at the front compared to the guitar melodies and in particular the somewhat distant drums. The croaking vocals are a little bit more present in the frontlines, often echoing and screeching rather than appearing to stick to strict choruses and verses. With the meandering guitar lines and rich keyboard sound, the songs have a nearly epic undertone to them, evoking a similar nature-worshipping sound as for instance Satyricon, but also bands newer bands like Krolok, although the latter has a different focus musically.
Being their first demo, it’s not strange that there is some room for improvement. The aforementioned prominent place of the keyboards goes perhaps a little bit too far (or better said, too loud) at times, something that is especially noticeable in ‘IV’. Also, you could argue that Burgonet stays a bit too close to Satyricon. But if we were to judge every band on their first demo for sticking close to their inspiration, so many bands would have never gotten the chance to develop their own sound. Besides, the band certainly has an undeniable knack for quality raw and atmospheric Black Metal, and it’s not every day that you find bands coming close to the earliest works of Satyricon. So all things together, for a first demo, Burgonet puts themselves on the map as a band to watch out for.
