2025 M&O Music / CD
m-o-music.com
From Switzerland comes Atlas Ashes, a melodic death metal
band with a forthcoming release on M&O Music. Stylistically, I hear a clear
mid-period In Flames influence (which causes me to hesitate to use the words
death metal to describe this at all), with perhaps some influence from the
Finnish scene with melodies overtop riffs like earlier Amorphis (circa “Tales
from the Thousand Lakes” or even their more heavy metal-oriented records after
that) brought to the fore.
That said, that’s about the most remarkable thing about this
record (other than the interesting cover art). From the traditional and
predictable song arrangement to the at-times rather pedestrian riffs and
just-adequate vocals, this album was a struggle to get through. The recording
is clear but sterile, with no real personality to it, and I haven’t found a
truly memorable hook on the entire thing that grabbed me. All the songs just
seemed to blend from one to another, not because there was no variation, but the
songs just didn’t interest me at all. “Slaughter of the Soul” this is not.
There’s also some annoying metalcore-style moments here, which makes sense for
a band like this, since modern melodic death metal and modern metalcore share
some ancestral musical DNA.
This seems to be commercial metal for commercial palates.
Perhaps Arch Enemy fans or In Flames fans might take a liking to this, but it
surely isn’t for the underground death metalist. I just found it boring and
nice-sounding with no real aggression or heaviness.
No comments:
Post a Comment