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The only original member left is vocalist Leif Jensen. With a complete new (Dutch) line-up their new album is now available. All the songs are written by (new) guitar player Marvin Vriesde (Severe Torture, Blo.Torch), who performed live with the band back in 1996, 2002 and 2005.

With that in mind, you would probably expect that the new album sounds completely different from the band's earlier work. I can reassure you that this isn't the fact. At first, the vocals of Leif are on top and that makes the band rather recognizable. Secondly, the songs do still have influences of Slayer and Kreator in them, but with a tad of death metal. In "Reawakening" for example Leif's harsh shouting vocals are varied with death growls done by Dan Swäno. On top of that, they have recruited Rob Urbinati (Sacrifice) for a contribution in the song "Gleaming like Silver".

With drummer Koen Herfst (Epica, Armin van Buuren) and Joost van der Graaf (Creepmime, Sinister) they have a very good rhythm section. Especially the drums sound very tight and impressive. In most of the tracks, the tempo is rather high, but the band slows down on occasion too. Like I said in the beginning, in most of the songs the influences of Slayer lay on top, especially in the riffs. Talking about riffs, I especially like the riffing in the song "Gleaming like Silver" and the galloping ones in "Be My Own Hand".

Final conclusion is that Dew-Scented has once more succeeded in releasing a good thrash album, combining eighties thrash with death in a modern jacket. The complete new line-up did not have any negative influences, rather the opposite.

Ps. Is there a reader, who knows why all Dew-Scented album titles start with the character: I ?

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