The fun of working on Metalrage is the fact that you get in contact with all kinds of music that I wasn’t even aware of before. There are also a lot of bands that describe their music so hard or complex, that one just has to be interesting to listen to. This description also counts for Deviated Presence. In their biography I read that their music is described by: ‘If you were to describe it more closely the music evolved from Death Metal to Black-Death-Trash-Power-Prog-Metal with Jazz influences…’ Well, who cannot be curious?

The first thing that I’m immediately aware of is the fact that the line-up doesn’t show a drummer. This band uses electronic drums. Well, no hard feelings, but from my opinion, a drummer is very important in any band, especially when performing live.
Secondly the songs are all pretty long. The fourth one takes more than fourteen minutes, whereas the first and the last song last for more than ten.
Thirdly, the speed of the songs is enormous. The first riff hasn’t even been ended or the second one and another one, and another one and another one are following after each other. As a result of this, the structure of the song is completely gone and anyone who listens to this record would ask themselves what is meant by this.

So, we’ve got some statements to make up our minds about Deviated Presence, speaking about the background and the frame. Let’s take a look at the inside of the songs. They’re actually quite good. Although the songs as a whole are somewhat of a disaster, the individually parts are quite nice and the technical abilities of each of the musicians is ok. In the fourth song, Hope, which I already mentioned, the music starts to vary a little bit, varying from the high speed into a little acoustic part. This doesn’t take that long, but makes clear that fun is not the only issue for this band. They also wanted to try something. Unfortunately this is one of the very few ones.

As a last thing I want to say something about the (second) vocals. Off course the shouting/grunting vocals are present on this record. They’re not my kind of thing, but ok. But the combination of the strange, low, clean singing second vocals together with the first voice are pretty bad. They’re not at the same level and don’t fit at all. Separately they would be better of, and in this form they are present.

For my conclusion I would like to say that exaggerating a little bit could make a band look interesting, a nice way to sell a product, but it could also be misleading for anyone who wants to listen to a couple of friends who enjoy making music and become a bit too enthusiastic.