Review Summary: Ending with a new beginning
It's not that uncommon for the final piece of a band's output to showcase a radical stylistic departure from the status quo. I mean, you can only play a particular style for so long, and the heavily divergent swan song is often the manifestation of internal tension. Said tension, in combination with a typically lukewarm reception of the new style, then tends to lead to the band's demise. That's not to say that all of those releases are created equal, just compare Wings' Diatribe with As Serenity Fades' Deux for some Finnish examples. Given Paraxism's perpetual skew towards experimentation and easily discernible unrest on their penultimate release, it should be no surprise that their final demo seems like one of those plunges.
"Double Me" kicks off with a sinister organ that gets quickly augmented with a busy bass line and a drawler of the Vedder persuasion. Wait, what does this even have to do with the experimental death 'n' roll Paraxism of old? Surprisingly enough, the mindset on display is quite similar. While the arrangements are quite lush, likely as a result of a squadron of musicians large enough to start their own band joining the fold, the underlying structuring is not at all unlike what the guys did previously. Once the smashing chorus for the opener rolls around, the meaty riffing is quite reminiscent of the grunge'y explorative moments on Promo '97, while the synth flourishes quite successfully put their own spin on Paraxism's trademark major-key vibes and prior augmented instrumentation. It's a natural progression from what the guys were flirting with previously, and it seems like a bigger jump than it actually is. Crucially though, the band feels alive again. The new stylistic forays seem to have reinvigorated everyone, which is a welcome change after the slight stiffness of their previous release.
Unfortunately, not everything is quite as fun and games as "Double Me". The demo's downfall comes in its heterogeneous, exploratory material. Having a full keyboard's worth of sounds on tap is news to the guys, and the instrument is over-utilised. "Lenient" falls victim to this, with ferocious riffing and the tape's only reemergence of the old harsh vocals getting lost in needlessly dense layers of atmospherics placed in the foreground. "Preach to Recover" is largely a feel-good, piano-driven ballad that only gels with the frontman's mournful edge in the ice-cold ring-out of the chords in the interlude. "Regret" wants to have it all, flirting with Hispanic harmonies and a subtle nod to the band's 1995 promo among other things, but falls victim to overreaching.
Nevertheless, the seeds to a pretty damn good Paraxism 3.0 are firmly in place. The band cut three more tracks, which probably went unreleased as the internet doesn't know anything about them. This batch of material saw them hone in on the moments that worked on this demo, toning down the optimism, keyboards and tempo a little to make the best use of the singer's melancholy. The second track from there could well have been the new incarnation's "Fear", given its haunting bass vamp and octave-jump-happy synth earworm. For whatever reason it wasn't to be, and the band fell apart. Half the new recruits went on to Timo Rautiainen, the singer journeyed around for a couple of years before broadening his delivery range and making a name for himself in Ghost Brigade, and the keyboardist kept bits of the sound alive after joining Purity. The band's mastermind laid down vocals on a single demo of a cookie cutter Sotajumala precursor before largely hanging up the hat. And so ended the life and times of the finest act to emerge from the widely understood death 'n' roll movement, with their '95 and '96 releases being among the best death-related material ever put out. It's a pity the band resisted approaches from a guy from Agalloch to have their material re-released, they deserve far more attention than they've had.
