Meiche is raw black metal, with foaming-at-the-mouth type vocals and medium to fast pace. They achieve a good doomy break near the end of the first track, but the black metal sections are pretty standard fare -- not bad, but nothing to stir your blackened soul either. Not a hopeless effort, but in my opinion they need to reach a more distinctive sound and tone down the vocals a little in the mix.

For Ruin is a generally briskly paced melodic death effort, and like Meiche seems a little too rooted in the past and in need of more distinctive elements. It is nonetheless a decent effort, especially considering it is pretty much a one-man band. The guitar work on opener "Vertigo" is quite memorable, for instance, and the congruence that is achieved in the music is certainly laudable. For Ruin could have used some extra production polish though, as its melodic death misses a strong sound a lot more than Meiche's raw black metal does. A very close cover of Hypocrisy's doomy classic "Apocalypse" from _The Fourth Dimension_ closes the demo nicely.

While both projects still need plenty of work, I see no reason why they (especially For Ruin) shouldn't be able to evolve into something quite interesting at some stage in the future.