It is in areas where many bands of this type are prone to do too much or too little that D Creation's imagination, skill, and savvy shine most. Shunning anything that could be called stereotypical melodic death metal riffing, the guitars on Silent Echoes incorporate a variety of metal and rock styles. The album derives much of its energy and effective pacing from the way buoyant rhythms á la Scar Symmetry (whom D Creation also resemble in their churning guitar sound and in certain chord progressions) are combined with edgier ones. Neither grandstanding nor denigration characterizes their approach to solos, those on Silent Echoes being almost surreptitious in the way they function, yet striking because they're crazily unstructured but controlled and fluid. Equally tasteful are Heidi Hakoinen's keyboards, which enhance the band's sound with textures, atmospheric elements, beautiful melodies, and quirky accents whose sonic and contextual perfection should find favor even with those who generally regard that instrument as innocuous at best, an emasculating intrusion at worst.

Even the daintiest of keyboards, however, wouldn't be able to undermine D Creation's puissance, not with frontman Olli Vuorinen's arsenal of growls, snarls, bellows, vicious but far from mindless aggro spewings, and other extreme styles, all of which are quite masterful, as is the interplay between his various voices. The unusually complex rough/clean dynamic he achieves would be much richer, though, if his gentler mode weren't so flat and mechanical, especially in "Drifting Forever" and "Killdream." Elsewhere, strong melodies, artful layering, and effective interchanges with guttural utterances compensate somewhat for its failings. The poignant chorus of "Somewhere," the album's best track, shows what the addition of just a little emotion can do for his performance. Once Olli starts to consistently inject his clean vocals with nuance and oomph, he'll be scary good.

Already a formidable presence (one that is enhanced by the generous amount of space between his voice and the other instruments), Vuorinen is key to D Creation's balanced, well-integrated diverseness. As a "growl-singer" rather than just a noisy drain, he fuses melody and aggression, fluidity and roughness. The savagery of his extreme vocals offsets the music's upbeat tone, as does the rage in his entertaining lyrics, whose idiosyncratic articulation of the pain of living also contributes an offbeat element. In "Somewhere," for example, he roars lines from The Wizard of Oz's "Over the Rainbow." And somehow it works.

Risk-taking may not be a major feature of Silent Echoes but, when present, is always successful, and there's little doubt D Creation are capable of doing something even more challenging. With the talent and ambition they've displayed in developing a fresh sound, crafting fully realized compositions and arrangements, and giving each song its own personality, a little creative craziness within the bounds of aesthetics and accessibility would seem as natural for them as transcending the traditions of a tired genre.

written by Maud

Playing time: 42:31