Whispering

FlameDrop are yet another in an endless stream of mildly enjoyable, yet largely interchangeable melodic death bands who have a few good things going for them, but can’t quite seem to get out of the tedious orthodoxies that were set into the style almost 20 years ago. There may be a solid riff here or there that catches the ear, but the sheer predictability of the style tends to wear these exciting elements thin rather quickly. There is something of a charm to this being an independent release that doesn’t attempt to hide behind a high end production in order to keep the listener cued in, but apart from that, this is lost in plain city.

It is beyond question that this band possesses some pretty good chops, as they make clear use of the guitar’s melodic capabilities, flushing out a few nimble thrash riffs, and plenty of repetitive melodies that loosely resemble some material from “Heartwork”, “Slaughter Of The Soul” and “Skydancer”. There’s even an occasional guitar solo like the one heard on “Reef” that shows a band capable of expressing a level of virtuosity in spite of the present trend towards eliminating such technical displays. But in the end, only a couple of these songs translate into something that is memorable, such as “Not Too Much”, and even in that case there is this tendency towards chugging and grooving to fill place in between melodic sections.

The groove/modern metal tendencies in the riff work are not the only banal aspect plugging up what should be a consistent flow of harmonic progression. Vocalist Kale Tamas sounds utterly generic, occasionally sounding like an angry Kirk Windstein, but mostly like a limp David Vincent circa “Domination”, ergo a death barker who wishes he was Phil Anselmo. The performance is all but completely flat, as Kale seems to only know 2 guttural vocal characters, and only occasionally employs the higher and shriller one, while the dominant low one mostly sticks to a percussive monotone that is both unintelligible and fairly grating.

There are plenty of fish in the melodeath sea, which is a good thing given that this FlameDrop was put out right when it hit the water. Some of the hard core fans of Carcass’s melodic death work in the mid 90s might find a few things to like here, as may well be the case with fans of early Gothenburg material, but who would want to waste their time on a band that can be best described as inoffensively average. Personally I’d wager to bet that there are even some metalcore oriented albums out there, similar to this, that are more memorable.