One of my favourite pastimes is scouring YouTube for gear demos and one of my favourite channels is fearedse, run by a guitarist called Ola Englund from Stockholm in Sweden. Ola’s gear demos are not your traditional videos that show every knob and switch, instead Ola lays down brutal multitrack guitars over his own compositions. Ola demonstrates high gain amps as he is in a couple of very heavy metal bands, Feared and Scarpoint. I saw on his recent demo video above which is a track called “Daddy’s girl” from the Feared debut album which is available in the iTunes Store, I thought it sounded pretty fierce so I bought it!

Now as you will hear above if you don’t like gruff vocals and punishing metal riffs then you will probably want to stop reading now, this album doesn’t pull any punches. The album includes 9 tracks of fire-breathing Metal which the Scandinavians are well known for but Ola is a very talented rhythm guitar player as well as technical solo guitar player which is what makes the album so enjoyable to listen to. The guitars sound massive, as you can hear in Ola’s demo’s he manages to get the most out of any amp whether it be a Peavey 5150, Mesa Boogie Road King or Diezel Einstein. More recently Ola has also started using a Fractal Audio Axe-FX, check out his demo here.

Some of the highlights on the album for me are the opening track “Fall Of Man” which really sets the pace well for the rest of the album with a deceptively soft intro leading into a ferocious intro riff before the main verse riff comes in which, as with everything on this album, is an incredibly tight and accurate rapid fire rhythmic riff. The next 2 tracks “Breaking The Cycle” and “Antisocial” also keep the sonic assault blasting through your speakers with the same driving intensity of the opener. You can already hear “Daddy’s Girl” in the demo video above, another great track that shows how tight the band can play and that will give you a good idea of the rest of the album from a songwriting and production point of view. “Bullied” has quite a different feel to the preceeding tracks, almost a different genre, much slower from the rest of the songs I wonder if this would have been better in the middle of the album to create more of a contrast especially as the final song “A Regret” is a ballad with Acoustic guitars arpeggating chords throughout, this track is also quite a surprise after the 8 tracks that have melted your ears before it!

If you like bands such as Chimaira and Lamb Of God you will love this album, it has technical guitar playing by the bucketload with infectious grooves and a solid rhythm section backing up the riffs. The gruff vocals may not be to everyone’s taste but listen to the demo above and if you like it search for Feared – Feared in the iTunes Store or click on the Amazon link below.

UPDATE: There is also a 5 track EP available which features some newer material and having just listened to it I can tell you that is every bit as good as the album so you may want to look that one up too (I’ll include a link to Amazon below).

http://www.myspace.com/fearedband