Band:	Lithica
Album:	The Unholy
Style:	Symphonic black metal
Release date:	June 08, 2007
A review by:	Baz Anderson

01. Grominsloft
02. Ingress Into Blasphemy
03. The Dreamshade
04. Nokturnal

Lithica are Canada's latest extreme black metal export. Forming in mid-2005 we now have their nicely presented four track demo to give us some idea of what they are all about. Before even putting the CD in the machine you can roughly predict what this group of Canadians is going to have recorded for us - undecipherable band logo, black and white picture of the band wearing corpsepaint and for the cherry on the cake, an inverted cross inside the maple leaf of the Canadian flag.

Well the CD kicks off how it means to go on, and the loud keyboards somewhat catch you off-guard. I was expecting black metal in the vein of Mayhem and Watain, but Lithica provide more of a symphonic experience along the Old Man's Child, Dimmu Borgir sort of path of black metal. Great vocals although maybe a little quiet, typical black metal style droning guitar and bass and pretty average drums make up this demo, with of course the overbearing keyboards over the top of it all.

The songs themselves are of an average length, nicely structured and each certainly has their moment, blastbeats (drums) and keyboards certainly the main focus here. This is black metal that doesn't seem to be all about total destruction and armageddon in the form of music, but of the combination of extreme black metal and the symphonies somewhat similar to those of the "Spiritual Black Dimensions" Dimmu Borgir album and such similar albums of the genre.

The inside casing cites a person's name as the drummer, although especially during the first and last tracks the drums sound just like a drum machine which is a little disappointing. I am sure the band don't need telling that a real, soft and squishy human being bashing away at a drum kit sounds much more natural and raw when it comes to black metal. Also the keyboards are far too high in the mix, but other than this I can not find anything else to complain about apart from that maybe they don't try and push the boundaries of the genre as much as is good to hear - but you need to walk before you can run, this is just a young band.

This is a good, worthwhile demo if you like this kind of black metal. Haunting keyboard melodies, fierce drums and of course the rasping black metal vocals make this a nice, complete package of young black metal.