Encono - E.D.

In October of last year, a young Russian band by the name of Encono released a fairly good demo under the name of E.D.. The project really began back in 2007, when Loki, the band's synth master and live keys, started learning how to use sound editing software. It was at this time that he also practiced with experimental electronic music, which eventually led to the 2009 joining of former bandmate Kormery.

It was then that the duo decided to name the project Encono. However, with several arguments between himself and Kormery, the project was close to being shut down. Luckily, thanks to Kormery leaving in 2013 and Asteroth and his wife, Jilt, the project was able to stay alive. With Asteroth taking over the vocals, and Jilt adding some sex appeal to the overall output of the live performances, the band started to live again.

And, well, things went uphill from there, getting an 8 city tour in Russia with European acts A7ie and Larva. After that tour, they finally landed a new bandmate, Digger, who shall be adding guitars to their latest album. However, I want to take a look at the demo and see what these guys have in store for us.

It starts off with the simplistically titled song, Adios, puta!. While the title of the song kind of turned me off in a huge manner for being just so stupid, the song itself went pretty well for a demo. Don't expect something amazing; the quality of the material isn't the best in the world due to just being a demo, but, if it were to be cleaned up, I could really see it being a lot better. It has a very dancey beat with the same ol'distorted vocals that we're used to within the dark electro scene.

My Salvation was medium paced, slower than the first song, and offered a better beat. The overall song was much more clear than the previous, and thus I enjoyed it a lot more. The vocals were still distorted, but not as bad as the previous track. The final track on the album was Confession of the innocent, which was better than the other two tracks by far. Putting a heavy emphasis on synths that really hit hard, with the slow and almost tormented voice of Asteroth, it turned out to be my favorite on the album.

And, while I do find this release to be really good, I just can't help but pool it with so many others that came before them. They can definitely do dark-electro well, they just need to somehow make it refreshing and stick out from everything else on the market. I mean, their videos show off that they can pull off some pretty good shows, they just need to make the songs match the onstage angst they have going for them. Mar 17 2014