This project of Erik Rutan is dark, heavy metal, not quite death, not quite doom, but heavy, intricate and at times slow. One way I might describe it - take some melodic Swedish death metal (not pretty melodies), slow it down a little, add some Morbid Angel-esque, Cthulhoid chaos, a dash of hunted and pecked riffs (a la Chuck Schuldiner), and throw a female singer over the whole damn thing and there you go. To not go so far and say that everything Erik touches becomes gold, I will say that Alas is on par musically with all of Erik's efforts, but may not find the consumer success of Hate Eternal because it is not a brütal, pit-inspiring death fest. But again, it is good. A minor complaint - Tracey Beam's vocals are good, but in my opinion she needs to move out of the soprano range once in a while, it becomes old rather quickly, but I wouldn't kick her out of the CD player for eating crackers (if you know what I mean . . and I think you do).

© 2000 j. mcintyre