Martha’s Wake – Romans (demo)

Martha’s Wake
Romans
199? (no label)
Denver, Colorado, USA

Leah Carson – Vocals
Lori Carter – Backup vocals and flute
Drew Collins – Drums
Jon Nichols – Guitar
Melody Nichols – Bass and back-up vocals
J.W. Penzien – Keyboards

Side 1:

1. Burn Out
2. Lament of Planet Earth
3. Just Like Me

Side 2:

1. Righteous Man
2. Scarlet Letter
3. Café Moderato

I recently discovered Martha’s Wake when I got a copy of their excellent 1998 full-length Time and Elements. They had a very eclectic mix of metal, progressive, gothic, and alternative music that stayed pretty original. I tracked down their other albums – Coloring China and Romans. Both are also very good, but they are obviously moving up to Time & Elements. The weird thing is that the Romans full-length CD has 10 songs on it – the six listed above and four others, all in different order. I don’t know if this is pre-release, an earlier demo that was expanded to full-length by adding four new songs, or a completely different recording of the same songs. There is no date on this demo. It looks like Lori married J.W. sometime between this demo and the CD, though. But I still like the music a lot. Songs like “Lament of Planet Earth” are really catchy and almost straight up 90s alternative… but then they start mixing in touches of progressive metal here and there. After the full-length version of Romans, they released a tape in 1995 called Sophia.

Missing Information: what date was this recorded, and how does it relate to the full length CD?