The guitars employ a lot of the conventions of the standard death metal style for the most part, with fast picking and quick changes in melody and rhythm. In places the guitars have nice melodic ideas, which is done quite well within an aggressive context, but I felt that there was not a similar level of creativity in the more brutal passages. It would have been nice to hear some more thoughtful riffs during the more blasting sections, although they are nonetheless sufficient for the aggressive parts.

The song structures – typical of the chaotic death metal approach the band have taken – are quite complex and there are a lot of shifts and changes from idea to idea. Although it is integral to the style, I felt this was done a bit erratically in places, and the constant changes in the drum rhythms seem to chop up some of the songs a bit too much, so that the structures meander unnecessarily from time to time. Overall though I think they mesh this approach in well, and there are some nice melodic and even thrashy ideas to be found in the guitars, even if they are not always very attention-grabbing.

There is also a level of variety to be had here, even though there are only four tracks. Although each song is held together by various constants like the jumpy structures and general guitar technique, there is variation from song to song which can’t be bad. It would be interesting to see how they would approach a full length album, and whether they could deliver the same sort of variation and also hold the interest the whole time, because even in these four tracks there are places where the riffs could be more exciting. Even so this is a solid release, and I think there are some good ideas floating around. With a bit more structural coherence and some more imaginative riffs there could be a good future release on its way for this band, preferably if they manage to rise above the same old conventions of the death metal pigeon hole.

written by James Ashbey

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