Gregorio Franco is a man with many strings to his bow. He is a musician, composer, and sound engineer who has seemingly released more songs than I’ve hot dinners over on Bandcamp.

Now, the problem with that is that I’m not a huge fan of synthwave and the like, and as we’ve only just managed to chain a couple of new writers into our basement that are into that music, they’re already swamped with more Dungeon Synth than you can shake a flaming sword at. So, unfortunately, we haven’t been able to get around that part of his musical output yet – yet we plan to once we can, y’know, dig ourselves out of the crushing weight unlistened to records – but fortunately, he has also turned his hand to a one-man Death Metal project, called Eye of Terror and dropped the first demo called Demo MMXXIV last December and it is so far up my alley I can taste it in the back of my throat..

…Okay… that analogy might have gotten away from me…

Consisting of one track, Iron Grave, Eye of Terror steps into the world of Death Metal with thunderous drums, chugging riffs that feel like they are slapping you across the face, and vocals so low and gravely that he must have warmed up by gargling with an entire quarry. As a way of introducing yourself to the Death Metal side of life, it’s pretty bloody good.

Gregorio Franco doesn’t try anything too clever here, by which I mean he doesn’t go off with so much guitar noodling that it makes your head spin, nor does he go full on breakneck speed in an attempt to blow people away. What he does instead, and what I really like about Iron Grave, is he finds a deep, heavy groove and sets up camp.

If you read my shit on a regular basis you’ll know I don’t like comparing a band to another band, but just so you can get a good idea of what I mean by that last statement, Iron Grave by Eye of Terror lives in the same trench as Orgasmatron by Motorhead. It’s just that it lives a couple of bunkers down in the Death Metal part of town.

I like Iron Grave. I like it a lot and I hope that Gregorio Franco pushes on with Eye of Terror as I think he could be at the beginning of a very interesting journey and I’d love to tag along for the ride, and if you want to hop on board then head on over to the Eye of Terror Bandcamp page and check it out for yourself.