This album is of the melodic death style, though with more
emphasis on the death aspect of things (in my mind it's reminiscent of Beyond
the Embrace, only half as good). There's a mixture between clean, gruff and
death vocals throughout, though none of them really shine. A lot of the standard
song riffing is rather uninteresting, though a few here and there manage to
shine through, such as on "As Bloodshed Begins", one of the better tracks on the
album. "Icarus' Fall" is the best song on the album, featuring a pretty sick
solo that harmonizes half way through. The solos end up being the highlight of
the album, but there in my mind there aren't enough of them.
While the album as a whole isn't terrible, there isn't
much staying power to it. I'd probably bounce back and forth between the two
aforementioned tracks and maybe a couple others like "Inhale the Innocent"
(which has a decent recurring riff) as time moves on, but I don't see myself
really spinning it all the way through much. There's too much inconsistency in
quality from song to song and even within songs. This won't have much appeal
outside of fans of the genre.
