Download pick: Soilwork - Beyond The Infinite - 2014

After a nice comeback in 2013, Soilwork releases this 5 song EP. It follows their previous work very closely.


http://mediaportal.ru/7768-soilwork-beyond-the-infinite-ep-2014.html


It's not yet on Spotify but you can go to our vk.com group to check it out.

Album review: Scar Symmetry - The Singularity (Phase I - Neohumanity) - 2014

Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Country: Sweden
Year: 2014


Tracklist:
1. The Shape of Things to Come
2. Neohuman
3. Limits to Infinity
4. Cryonic Harvest
5. The Spiral Timeshift
6. Children of the Integrated Circuit
7. Neuromancers
8. Technocalyptic Cybergeddon


...And so, after the longest pause this band has ever taken, Scar Symmetry releases another album on its way down to an unattractive progressive and melodic style.

There's no doubt about the quality loss the band's
last disks have suffered. It's been a non-stop fall from the awesomeness of Symmetric In Design, and it seems that there's no way to stop it.

But, don’t be mistaken. This new album, as well as all the last previous ones, isn't an awful work; however, this is not one more mediocre piece of crap. Despite a few sweet spots, there’s nothing really mind blowing, no landmark or inflection point, but the quality and variety in composition have improved greatly, as well as the audio and technical complexity, even though it presents a modern song structure with little or no variation at all. The three years that the realization of this work took, were worth it… more or less. 

Paradoxically, the choruses are the weakest point, and the riffs the strongest one, followed by some decent bridges. This has been recurrent and increasing in the last albums, but in “Cryonic Harvest”, it’s too much to bear, it’s just disgusting and ruins the whole song. If you like Melodic Death Metal, and you are listening to a Melodic Death Metal band -a bit progressive but not so much-, to hear that kind of awful shit AS A SONG CHORUS!!.. is like to be kicked on the balls (or tits)... by a racing horse! C'mon! That’s something that should never happen, there is a reason for the “chorus” to exist. Still, it occurs and more often with every new release. The other songs, but “Neohuman”, have the same issue of having no good refrain, so you’ll have to listen, at least three times per song, to a crappy melody

This band has always characterized because of the mix of heavy riffs with harsh vocals and melodic choruses with clean vocals, brought from the Nü Metal. That’s not necessarily compatible with a Melodic Death Metal style, it depends on how it’s executed. Bands like Deadlock and Crematory have done it flawlessly in many occasions, and so it did Scar Symmetry in its firsts two albums. But now, some of their melodies aren’t compatible anymore with the liking of a death metal (of any kind) fan, and the melodic or the progressive style aren’t the problem. Check out the bridge in the song “burn” of Septic Flesh; it’s very melodic and calm but also it fits perfectly with the dark and aggressive band’s style, breaking the song while doing so.


These childish tunes, used more and more often by Scar Symmetry, are incompatible with the Melodic Death Metal style and even with the same song in which they are. It goes something like this: you start listening to a decent melodeath song, nice riffs, nice vocals, and when the time for the chorus arrives… PAFF!! a slap in your face! you hear Kinder Garden music! It’s so joyful, so childish, so nice and tender, you don’t know what you are hearing anymore. A melodeath song? Or a kiddy song about fantasy, stars and other shiny things (lyrics's recurrent thematic).

The number of songs infected by this tenderness is too big, increases with every new album, and drives always anyone who listened in awesomeness to their first disk. “The Anomaly”, “Domination Agenda”, “Fear Catalyst”, “Cryonic Harvest”, “Sculptor Void” and “Frequencyshifter”, are just some of the most lovely (in the worst of ways) songs of this decaying music group.

This, in conjunction with the predominant use of the flat and untalented Lars Palmqvist’s voice (clean vocals), produces one of the worst human emotions ever.

Some bridges deserve also special attention. The one from “Neohuman”, is more than three minutes long, it’s awesome and justifies the whole song (more than the chorus does). It’s complex, varied, and at some point beautiful. It’s really the album's life saver. Other one is from “The Spiral Timeshift”; it’s not as good as the previous one, but still it has variety and contains a very nice guitar solo. At last, the one from “Neuromancers” also shines.

About the album structure, it’s nothing like what the band has shown before. It has an introductory track, as well as an instrumental interlude (which is strangely the second best song). In addition, the other tracks are very lengthy, two of them surpassing 8 minutes of playback time. It’s refreshing, of course, to have this kind of variation once in a while. However, the last song “Technocalyptic Cybergeddon”, could have been very easily divided in two different songs, with no musical link between those two parts.

Even though this work has just 8 tracks, of which one is a short intro, and another one is an interlude, this isn’t an EP, but a full-length album. In fact, it has an acceptable play time of a bit more than 43 minutes. For this amount of content and quality, the price of $10 bucks at amazon.com, is bearable.

What undoubtedly has been improved in this release is the audio. The results of the equalization and the mixing are far better than in the previous work, delivering a deep sound but also acoustic balance. The bass sounds powerful but clean, the guitars strong enough, and the drums always good enough (however, it’s obvious the decision of not make them a relevant instrument). Besides Symmetric In Design and Pitch Black Progress, this is work has, without any doubt, the better sound of all the discography.

In sum, the first album of the announced trilogy is far better than Dark Matter Dimensions and The Unseen Empire, maybe being close to Holographic Universe, but it’s also far from being this group’s best one. The ensemble has freshen up its music a bit, with a good audio, some awesome bridges, a different album structure and a more technical and complex composition.

Finally…
The best song: Neohuman
The worst song: Cryonic Harvest

Visit our vk.com comunity at http://vk.com/metalwithin to listen to this crap, and join us in Spotify.

Download pick: Scar Symmetry - The Singularity (Phase I - Neohumanity) - 2014

Yep, another Scar Symmetry's álbum. While the review gets ready, here is a dowload link from Mediaportal.ru.

http://mediaportal.ru/7487-scar-symmetry-the-singularity-phase-i-neohumanity-2014.HTML

...Or you can listen to it through Spotify



Enjoy! (if you can)

Album review: Crematory - Antiserum - 2014

Genre: Gothic Metal/Industrial Metal
Country: Germany
Year: 2014


Tracklist:

1. Apocalyptic Vision
2. Until the End 
3. Shadowmaker
4. If You Believe
5. Inside Your Eyes
6. Kommt näher
7. Irony of Fate
8. Virus
9. Back from the Dead
10. Welcome
11. Antiserum

It has been more than 20 years since the release of Crematory's first album, being remarkable its slow but awesome evolution

Some elements have changed substantially, like the use of synths and the melodicity, which have both increased a lot, and the album structure. Others have endured, like the harsh vocals -which are exactly the same-, the German and English mix in the lyrics, and the style at its core. The progression has been slow, in general, but still each disk has its own feel, being easy to link any song to its album, only by listening to it.

Normally, this German band doesn't take more than two years to launch a new compilation. Indeed, the only exception to this has been, until now, because of the four years pause the band took on the year 2000, before releasing its best and more revolutionary album, "Revolution". This time, also four years have passed since the last compilation ("infinity"), and so, one may wonder if this time the revolution from "revolution" -so redundant- could happen again...

And yes. Antiserum innovates greatly respect to its predecessors. It's what a new Crematory album usually is, and more. It doesn't bring something significantly new, it maintains the band's essence intact, but refreshes it by the introduction of extra elements.

This time, the most obvious new element is the dissonance present in most of the tracks, except in "Irony Of Fate" and "Kommt Näher" -which has, by the way, the most catchy melody-. It kicks you in the ears from the very beginning of the album, till the end of it. It's present through all of it, in almost every song, and in almost every chorus. Most of the time it's ok, sometimes it's more than ok, but other times it's less than ok. In "Virus", the dissonance is unpleasant, in "Welcome" it just ruins the chorus, but in "Until The End" it makes the song interesting and attractive. It's clear the band's intention to make this element a distinctive one in this release, but it didn't work too well with a non-progressive style.

Another element added is the use of vocoder (as voice fx filter) in some songs, along with a more extensive use of trance music like instruments and effects. Sometimes, the band almost reaches an industrial metal style. This gives to the album a different and fresh vibe that separates it from its predecessors. However, this doesn't bring necessarily a good result.

The songs have a stiff modern structure, thus there is no novelty here. The album structure however is another matter. The band keeps changing it from time to time, sometimes just once after various albums. This time they've put once again an intro piece, and for the first time, as last track, the album title song. These changes may not seem too much, but they mark the band’s special vision of a particular composition style, in a particular epoch of its history. You can check through the discography the obvious similarities between a certain album structure -shared by various compilations- and a certain style in composition.

That first intro track matches the next one ("Until The End") more than it matches the whole album, feeling like part of that song. That takes away most of the relevance that an intro song must have in a compilation.

The first real song is, then, Until The End. It's a good song, one of the album's best ones. It has nice catchy tune in the riff, but it's weak at the chorus. In fact, the riff is better than the chorus, and the bridge has nothing to remember.

"Shadowmaker", the second song, suffers from the same disease, and the following pieces aren't better neither, till "Kommt Näher", which marks the album's climax. After that, again, the power and the composition quality descends up to "Welcome", which is a not-so-good song, ruined at some level by the dissonance present in the last chorus's segment.

Generally, in every release, Crematory puts as last track a melodic song. This time it's not the exception, however now this is the homonymous song album, and a bit heavy too. It's one of the best pieces in this work and a great way to end it.

About the price, we have to say it seems a little high for an eleven song compilation. Even more when one of them is just an unremarkable intro, none plays for more than five minutes -and for more than 4:30, in average-, and this is no way the best full-length release we've heard from this band. It's at $15.89 at amazon.com and at €15.99 at nuclearblast.de.

The Digipack version, as well as the Boxset edition, comes with two remixes of "Shadowmaker". If you have already listened to any Crematory's remixed song, released in the past, you may not be surprised by the poor quality of these new ones. So, don't get over excited about them and rush to get the more pricy album versions just because of these. It's better to just listen to them through a music stream service and save some bucks, because these don't worth the money they are asking for. The other goodies included in those sets, like posters and other shits, may be more interesting for a fan, though.

The audio isn't the best ever displayed by Crematory. It isn't superb but it's good enough to enjoy the powerful guitars and bass. It's a little tweaked with respect to the previous work, noticeable mostly in a deeper bass, even though it's hard to say it's superior. Here, the guitar has lost some relevance and the kick's bass seems too loud and overcharged, producing an unbalanced sound.

Overall, this band made another good but not excellent release. The album and every of its songs are lacking the consistency shown in disks like Revolution or Infinity . Even though some of them, like "Until The End", "Kommt Näher" and "Antiserum", are good ones, none will be remembered as one of the band's best ones. Some other tracks, like "Inside Your Eyes" are mediocre, at best.

As final comment, Crematory has always been a great and talented band, despite some unfortunate songs and Pray (2008' album). From its first album the band has improved in every aspect of its music, managing to leave its essence mostly intact. That's something pretty unique for a music group with more than twenty years of life. Of course, this can be attributed to the almost no line-up variation that the band has experimented through its history, but it's still something worthy of attention.