Caldera is a young 5-piece metalcore band from Belgium. Found in 2002 and having a major line-up change more recently, thoughts ocurred that it might be time for a second demo. Hardcore shouldn't be about fun, let's see if we can get a few laughs.

Their latest release: "IamTrash" (self-financed 5-track demo) is full of brutal moshing and melodic deathmetal riffs at midtempo. The cover displays an old man with a gun to his head, a lot of blood throughout the booklet and the back of the head of the man and his hand on the table holding the gun, all covered in blood. Looks nice!

There is a flavour of several tastes in music on this record, which can be blamed on the different backgrounds of Caldera's musicians. Easily sensed is hardcore and several metal influences. 

Lyricwise Caldera is nowhere near hardcore, but if we're looking at the music it's one big happy beatdown moshfest. They work this style out well and start off with a very brutal flavour on track 1, Drag & Move. On the other hand the slow, moshy deathmetal riffs are nice as well. The vocals are pleasant to the ears, except for all the dark low grunts, they really kill the brutal mood for me, bringing in too much darkness to the music. Grunting on records is fine, but it has to fit. It doesn't fit. If they drop the ugly grunts and evolve their vocals into something that adds to the screams, I'd like it a lot better.We wouldn't want a second Deicide now, do we? One more negative point is the sample or the selfrecorded sample on 'Snake Eyes', my god it sounds fucked up and it irritates the ears. (Had to get that off my chest, sorry)

There are a lot of things that will evolve as this band grows and should evolve. 5 tracks is nice, but a sixth track would have made things sound alike. But apart from the ugly grunts we have a brutal record with pumping backing vocals, pumping riffs and gutwretching screams. It really is a nice taste of what is to come if these guys can make new material that varies enough.