I recently noticed the city of Liège had over one hundred Metal (and alikes) bands in its area, and I mean bands that mostly have at least a demo if not an album. INNERFIRE also hail from that area even if their leader comes from Transilvania…
This 6 tracker mini-cd (31 minutes) shows the band exploring their own vision of Dark Gothic Death Metal, avoiding the boring female vocals and including only a few clear (male) voices here and there, most vocals being of a grunted nature. I’ve heard better Death vocals in the way these ones sometimes seem to come out with much efforts and thus, don’t always sound very natural, but that’s a detail cos they have quite a lot of variation with even some Black parts.
Most interesting here comes from the songwriting that really avoids the basic aspects of that kind of music and you often forget the real nature of the band, thanx to the many aggressive elements mixed to the great melodies and original guitar riffing. Keyboards aren't put ahead and back guitars quite well.
After several listenings, I even wonder why if I was fair labelling INNERFIRE as Gothic Dark Metal, sounding more like early THE GATHERING (when they had Death vocals) with a bit of PHLEBOTOMIZED maybe…
Anyway, this is a really good release with a style that sounds quite different from the current trends.
Steph

http://www.innerfire.be.tf/