SCAVANGER, Scavanger (2005, demo)

The skull:
I bet there’s another band out there called Scavenger whose album cover is this exact, blurry, angry, red skull, and when this band stole it, they changed the spelling of the band name to Scavanger (note the extra A) to avoid being caught. So far, they’ve gotten away with it, but how long can they keep running?

The music:
I imagine there are thousands of bands like this in Germany. Basically competent, totally boring trad metal bands knocking out chintsy-sounding demos in their bedrooms. They’re the first of four local openers tacked onto the UDO show. They play Sunday nights at their local bar, to a crowd they know personally to a man (and woman, since the bassist’s mom usually goes to their gigs.) They’re not horrible, but even on the ranked list of “Bands Who Aren’t Horrible,” they fall somewhere in the high 6000s. Weirdly, two of the three songs on their Reverbnation page are from this demo, even though they’ve released two albums since. I’m not about to look further into their discography, but that’s a bad sign right there, as these old tunes (the 2005 demo is their first recording) are not so hot. The newer track sounds more or less the same, although I think those drums are real. Back in the 90s, when I was writing a zine, if I got a demo like this from an American band, I might have ginned up some enthusiasm for them, as they’re at least melodic and more or less able to play, but in 2005? In 2014? Not a chance. AND they’re from Germany, where the bar for this sort of thing really should be higher.
— Friar Johnsen