Metal Underground.com

Underground, Arizona-based act Our Daily Trespasses has a unique sound crafted by weaving together the fringes of several different metal styles, resulting in an extreme and wild ride that gives the bigger bands a run for their money. If the metal gods are just, then this is an outfit that shouldn’t stay underground for too long, as the songs on this demo could easily be placed up against a wide range of genre titans and easily hold their own.

The band’s “sounds like” list is fairly extensive, featuring a huge gap between styles, and while some of the stated influences are more accurate or clearly heard than others, Our Daily Trespasses does reach across several genre boundaries. At first it might be tempting to think the band is just name dropping to pick up more views when listing both Iced Earth and Old Man’s Child as influences, but songs like “Lost” show how those two different worlds can be effectively bridged. Black metal shrieks with some symphonic backing elements can transition smoothly into power metal styled guitar solos and then morph into epic folk style clean singing without skipping a beat.

Our Daily Trespasses is one of those bands that can cause a whole lot of debate on which sub-genre is which and where one label ends before another begins. Rather than calling it “blackened death” or “blackened thrash,” it’s really just plain old “blackened metal.” The black metal growls and guitar tone sound somewhere between Borknagar and Old Man’s Child, while the synths bring to mind bands like Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth, although they are a bit more in the background. “Tear in Reality,” on the other hand, has some bass noodling that makes it seem like the band is going for something more on the progressive side.

Unfortunately, the demo’s sound quality is on the low end, and it can really drag the tracks down. While everything can be heard, it’s all a bit fuzzy, and there are parts, like the aforementioned bass-heavy “Tear in Reality,” where a clearer production would knock these tracks out of the park. That shouldn’t deter potential listeners though, as there’s a quality product here within the underground recording quality. With a sound boost and a decent publicist there’s no reason that Our Daily Trespasses couldn’t become a serious contender for the crowd that likes their music varied, cold, and symphonic.