Aiming to mix Depressive Black Metal with Atmospheric Black Metal, HATEFUL DESOLATION is a collaboration between Egyptian and Italian musicians. Starting off a year ago as a solo project by Void aka Lord Mist, Gray Ravenmoon was soon brought on board to do the vocals, and this year sees the release of their debut demo "Withering in Dust".

Kicking off with "Your Memory Will Never Fade", this starts off with a very slow moody passage that lulls the listener on a journey through the ether. This is a very atmospheric song, bringing to mind bands such as ELDERWIND.  There is an instrumental version of "Your Memory Will Never Fade" which comes as a special bonus track on the physical copies of the demo. The second track on the demo is "Withering in Solitude", in which cold and frozen riffs intermingle with gravelly rasped vocals and beautiful atmospheric passages. The vocals in particular reminded me a lot of a more melancholic version of RIGORMORTEM, and considering that Gray Ravenmoon was just 16 at the time of recording this demo, they certainly are impressive.

One thing that must be said for the demo is that HATEFUL DESOLATION have managed to pack in a lot into just two songs, and it will be interesting to see if they are able to keep up this creativity over the course of a complete full-length album. Still, "Withering in Dust" is not without its flaws. Some of the melody progressions are halting and jolty, especially in "Withering in Solitude" which can distract the listener somewhat. Also, whilst having a raw and roughened edge is an integral part of the older subgenres of Black Metal in particular, the recording quality on demo is overly raw and messy in parts, and the volumes of the various layers are sometimes a bit out, resulting in some sections being a bit too soft.

All in all, it seems like HATEFUL DESOLATION have put a considerable amount of thought into this demo: this duo certainly has a lot of potential, and it will be interesting to see what they are capable of once they have managed to polish the edges a bit.