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This band hails from my own province Friesland, so I have to be very careful not to slaughter their debut record. I don't want my windows smashed or to be beaten to a pulp when visiting a metal concert in the neighbourhood. Just kidding, I don't have to be negative because this is just a very good album. I saw the band play live as opener for Sepultura in 2009 and the band played on Waldrock the same year too. In Danny Boonstra the band has a very charismatic front man, live he gets the crowd going and meanwhile he takes care of the keyboards. His vocals are very convincing, low grunting ones combined with more aggressive screaming. The songs are most of the times very fast with a lot of thrashy parts. They add nice keyboard layers, but all in service of the songs, they never get the upper hand. Another thing that caught my attention is the good guitar parts. Nice melodic solo's can be found in several songs. If I had to describe their music, I would call it brutal thrash metal with death vocals and melodic parts. A kind of Devil Driver, Kreator potpourri with some keyboard parts. Take for example the track "Twist of Faith"; with a less grunting vocal style it would be a thrash song that could have been on every modern thrash album. It is not all new and original what they serve, but at least they try to make a difference. However, just to call them a thrash band with grunting vocals would not be completely accurate. There are enough elements from the death metal scene and even Hammond sounding keys like in "Shatter Them" to make them different. In "The Subtle Decay" there are even some female vocals; the duet between Danny and Claudia Edwards van Muijen forms a nice contrast. The production is done by Jord Otto (ReVamp) and he has done an excellent job, it all sounds very heavy and tight. I must be honest, in my opinion this album isn't inferior to the better releases from my country, better yet, and it isn't inferior to the better releases worldwide either. Am I too positive? No, I have been listening to the album time after time and I could not find negative points and yes I was really on the look out for them, otherwise all you readers would think again that I'm too chauvinistic. Bull's eye! | ||||||||||||||||||
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