Pale Creation “1994 demo” CS

Here's the second and final Pale Creation demo from 1994 with more commentary from former frontman Nick Brewer. While Nick refers to the direction of this demo as more potentially "emo", I definitely wouldn't go that far. The "less crossover metal" response is absolutely accurate, as many of these songs are a touch slower and more melodic, but they're also heavier (thanks in so small part to an excellently crunchy recording), and certainly retained the identity that the band established with the first demo. Here's what Nick has to say about this era of the band:

We didn't really know what to do after Steve and Rick left, so we talked to a lot of people about finding new members. Kurt Vaigl, a good friend and music lover, told us he'd love to work with us on some new music, so we rehearsed with him right away. It was a good match, we liked Kurt and he was a great guitar player. We had a lot of bass players after Rick left—at least three or four—until we had our good friend Matt Lucy audition for bass (though he was actually a guitarist). This lineup resulted in a second demo recorded in late-1994 at Suma Studios in the boondocks of Ohio. Bill Korecky came out once again to track the drums in the great rooms that Suma had. Then we took the tapes to the new Mars Recording Studio that was under construction in Streetsboro, where we added guitars, bass, and of course the vocals. With Kurt we headed in a way different direction—less crossover metal and more... (dare I say) emo? I had changed my vocal style from a Hetfield-ish growl to a singing kind of style, which surprised a lot of people, so this second demo received mixed reactions. We played more shows with this lineup and managed to mix the songs from both demos together for our live sets. Eventually Kurt moved on and the band dissolved...

The above re-recording of "Natural Assassin" from the 1994 sessions didn't actually appear on the demo, but this rendition of one of the band's classic tunes improves upon the sound quality of the earlier recording, and is absolutely worth checking out.

It was really awesome to see the first Pale Creation post get such an overwhelming response, so hopefully everyone that enjoyed that material will feel the same way about this demo—which certainly only further solidifies the fact that these guys should've gotten the opportunity to do a proper record far sooner than they did. But, as usual, excellent recordings often go unnoticed... so at least we have these songs documented to enjoy for years to come—in one form or another.

I'll let Nick's final words close things out here:

A few years after we broke up, Dennis and I regrouped with Matt Lucy and a new lineup that also included Matt Shack and Justin Endres. We decided to keep the name Pale Creation and wrote a whole new batch of songs that became what I felt was our finest material ever... but that's a whole other story!