This is a new Danish band that is on their way to praise and glory, instead of the usual demo release with a few tracks, the band had enough material to release a demo with the length of a full length album, and that turned out to be "Visionary Control" where we are offered progressive power metal with quite a punch.

The band has quite an unique sound, it is hard to pinpoint from where the band gets their influences, though one can state they have some diverse inspirational sources. The music is well played and the band does provide some good technical details. There is good guitar work, an audible bass, which delivers some good lines. The drumming are good and diverse, there are some good rhythm patters and some good breaks and fills. The keyboards are very dominating in the sound picture, together with the swirling guitar melodies. The most of the keyboard play is good and fitting and adds an extra dimension. Though I think it once in a while gets overdone and dominates too much and pulls the focus away from the rest of the music.

At the first listen the music isn't that easy to get into, it takes some listens to get beneath the at times tricky compositions. Together with the at times odd vocal from Anders Vyberg, who now is out of the band. He does have a great vocal though, one of these distinct raw vocals which needs a bit of getting used to, before it really hits the nail. And it does and starts to become a fitting part of the music as the time passes by, too bad the band has lost him.

This is a pretty good demo from Sworn, and there are big chances of them being picked up by a label. The band seems to be very good musicians, they know how to use their instruments and how to make them sound good. Though a bit of work on the song writing part wouldn't hurt, I could use some more catchy and hooking parts and some more flow at times, but that are the things which come with the time, and a band that is as far as Sworn on their first release, will for sure hit it on their second. This is a sure thing to check out if you're into progressive metal, and I'm pretty sure in that we'll soon hear more to these guys.

Sworn website

Kindly supplied by Intromental

Please note that we don't grade demo-releases, to avoid comparison to label/album-releases.