2007-04-30
I've reviewed this band's last album
here, and was very impressed by it. Two years later, and it seems that the band has progressed quite a bit. The main difference is the band going into an even more melodic direction, mainly by using their female vocalist more prominently and injecting more melody into their tunes.
What is their music about? It's difficult to put a tag on this, some melodic death metal, some metalcore touches, and the strong melodic voice by their female vocalist - it's a nice even balance of aggression and melody. Think
In Flames with deeper growled vocals plus a female vocalist and well crafted keyboards.
The album opens up with the aggressive "We Shall All Bleed", strong riffing, a tight sound; it's certainly a very polished and well made track, and the song ends with a nice mellow passage that features some cool clean guitar sound.
"Code Of Honor" is even catchier, with an almost Goth-rock performance by the female vocals, it feels a bit like metalcore with the emo vocals handled by a female, nice idea. "Loser's Ballet" features some strong orchestral leanings with a melancholic piano/violin melody line, the track starts out more reminiscent of what the band did in the last album, there's some
Dimmu Borgir/symphonic black metal feel here, before the melo-death/core kicks in. There's another orchestral blackish bit in the end which throws another curve ball, and I have to say the band certainly does something quite unique here.
Tracks such as "Dark Cell" are much more clearly into metalcore land, with the deep growled vocals moving it more into death metal, the female vocals add the correct amount of melody again.
A track such as "End Begins" shows quite clearly that there's no denying that the female vocals send this into a bit of a pop direction, but it works anyway. What doesn’t work are the euro-pop dance keyboards at the middle, it may be a fresh idea, but it still sucks.
It's basically another winner by this band, it's definitely not as aggressive and dark as the last album, and certainly more melodic and catchy , but it's still very well played, full of strong hooks, very well produced, mostly it's easy and plain fun.
Alon Miasnikov
