So after breaking up for a few years, it appears that Mikael Sandorf has reformed The Duskfall to release some awesome melodic death metal. To be honest, I kinda stop paying attention to The Duskfall after Fraility; their melodic "death" metal seemed far too watered down after that album. However, the teasers that have been released thus far have definitely whet my appetite; it sounds like Mikael is bringing some Gates of Ishtar-influenced sections into the music, i.e., lots of tremolo picking and blast beats. Listen to the most recent teaser that's been released:



There's one catch though: the vocals. I... really don't know what to think of them. Thoughts?

These guys were always generic as hell. The best song they ever had was "Source" and even that was flawed.

The teaser showed some catchier leads but... but... what the mother of fuck were those vocals? Wow was that guy supreme shit, and I thought the previous vocalist sucked.

Apparently he was the vocalist of Engel, which was a project of In Flames' current guitarist Niclas Engelin, the replacement for Jesper. So that gives you an idea of the amount of suckage from which he came.

The vocals were okay at first, but they don't mesh well at all with the more intense moments, i.e., the blast beats and tremolo picking. Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?

The vocalist sounds like he's trying to ape Rene Pedersen from Mercenary, at least in the beginning. That first bit wasn't bad, but I thought it got awfully generic once the blast section kicked in.

Vocalist sounds like he got kicked in the groin before doing his takes.

Come on man you gotta sound better than that

I liked Fraility but this new guy behind the mic sucks.

video in the OP trip report: whoa some cool impact font here. good choice boys. hmm a piano, ok. oh now we've got a boring guitar tone, bad shouty vocals and riffs from like 10 yesr ago probably. now that one place in iceland everyone films in is spinning around slowly. wow. overall i give it 10 windows movies makers out of 100.

Minus that terrible metalcore ending, I actually thought the vocals were rather interesting. Cool mix of singing in key with melodeath-style harshness. Didn't mind the guitars either but I certainly wasn't blown away. Generic-as-hell production but hey, it works.

I found this to be comical.
Yeah, I had to stop near the end where vocalist dude started doing his best Anders Friden impression. I liked that instrumental teaser way more than this. Still gonna listen to this when it comes out though, I like Frality and Source, even Lifetime supply of Guilt had some good enough deaththrash stuff on it.

They've posted their second song:



The riffing is awesome, it reminds me of Gates of Ishtar from the 90's. But the vocals in the chorus remind me of Linkin Park circa Hybrid Theory...

Darkest Hour did this on their latest and it worked. Duskfall did it here and it doesn't. Song itself was a little neat when it goes into black metal for a little. The riffs themselves are quite standard and I don't know what hook was worse, the vocals or... nah it was the vocals. Plus, this song was in the OP at the end.

Chorus sounds like In Flames to me. Instrumentally-wise this sounds pretty tight, but what the hell's up with that January North American release date?

After listening to the single Farewell I had some hope for the album. The vocals work very well there, and those guitars are catchy as hell. The rest of the album isn't up to par sadly, though the opening track has some cool blastbeats and tremolo picking. I suppose that front-loading the album so heavily factors powerfully in the overall impression of dullness I get by listening to it the whole way through, though it picks up near the end (check 'Burn Your Ghost' and 'Travesty').
Vocals aren't so bad. The Rene Pedersen (Mercenary) comparison is very appropriate for a few songs, like the title track and 'Travesty', but 'singing at the top of my lungs until it kinda sounds like screaming' shtick comes off as inappropriate and exaggerated sometimes. I like that they are different that what I usually hear, though I think they could be better. I imagine the former harsh vocalist of Raunchy doing a better job, but I insist they are okay if you can tolerate this kind of vocals in your Melodeath.

These are my impressions after the first listen. Hopefully it gets better after a while (though I'm not terribly tempted to actually give it another spin).

Looks like they haven't improved any since their inception.

When this kind of bands makes a clean sung chorus, why does it always have to be a pop chorus?? A normal, hooky heavy metal chorus would work fine, wouldn't it?

Well the vocals are awful. If they had a good vocalist at least the album would be listenable. I like the new Mors Principium Est album better although I'm not a big fan of it either. Most melodeath album has been disappointing this year. Except for the new At The Gates album I can't recall anything else that I have liked

in some way I didn't like this band in a beginning, because it was not The Moaning , The Everdawn and Gates of Ishtar, real serious bands from Luleå whit albums, but this come back make me listen it and I in some way like this new band. New line up seems only guitarist is from Luleå original line up is not there, so I don't give hight hopes to see band live