This demo is nothing short of a revelation. Clearly, The Living Fields do lack neither talent nor ambition. In the space of just 4 tracks and 22 minutes they successfully plough through many musical landscapes, crossing many different styles and genres' boundaries along the way, very much unlike those many bands that prefer to stay in just one field all the time. Thrash, doom, death and any other metals you can think of get melded with piano, violins, cello and acoustic guitars showing that band's influences come from many varied sources. In less capable hands it would have ended up sounding messy, but The Living Fields manage to make many stylistic changes and transitions sound natural and organic. When trying to describe 'The Miseries Never Cease' through other band's work, it's British ones that spring to mind first, such as My Dying Bride, Cradle of Filth and Skyclad, the last one for bringing violins and making them an integral part of thrash and later heavy metal and also for a similar tendency of openly addressing social issues of human life past and present in their lyrics. None of those bands, however, could serve as a direct musical reference because for a band with sound as rich and unconfined as The Living Fields' one direct reference is practically impossible. There are some very minor production flaws, but they are more than outweighed by the overall quality of the material presented. An intelligent, enchanting and deeply moving work that is set to become an underground classic.
Hellstorm, HMXtreme.com