Defiant Imagination

As you may know, I am a huge fan of Steve Digiorgio’s bass-playing, which is really the main reason I picked this album up. This album seems to be praised as the new coming of Christ in “melodic” death metal, having people comparing it to Death and other technical bands. Well, Death this is not, because the songs of Death had way more focus and struc-ture to it than these. I have a decent amount of annoyances with this album, which makes the rating drop at least 10 points unfortunately. This could have been a great album though, and the band is beyond skilled for this kind of music.

First I’d like to state that although I love Steve Digiorgio, this album really sounds like Steve playing over some background music by Quo Vadis most of the time. He is as prevalent as on the last two Vintersorg albums, but in this case, he is given even more freedom in fills and supporting bass on softer interludes. Not to say that the other instru-ments aren’t audible, but it seems he has been given a little too much freedom. Yes, I be-lieve in the melodic capabilities of bass, and support bassists fully on this, but it still has to support the music in general.

That aside, let’s look at the music. The album starts out kind of unexpected. I expected it to go into technical riffing immediately, but the first riff seems a more straightforward staccato riff. This is not bad by definition, and my expectations are deceiving me on this. Technical riffs are aplenty in the first song and on, and I really enjoy the variety of riffs, and the often demanding drumming supporting it. There seems to be a clear Gothenburg tinge to the music, from the vocals to the accelerated thrash beat slightly overused in a lot of the songs, but it doesn’t bother me so much, as it is still mostly aggressive death metal, without some of the clichés from the Gothenburg scene. The vocals are not really the high part of this album, and I got severely bothered by the hardcore shouting parts on the Tunnel Effect song. This is the only song with this, but it triggered the Shadow’s Fall gag reflex, and seemed very inappropriate for the music. Melody is very present throughout this album, and I would definitely call it a melodic death metal album, despite the para-dox that creates in many people’s minds.

This album had high expectations from me, and maybe that is what drove the rating down mostly, but I do not believe this is as relevant as for example, Martyr’s Hopeless Hopes, or any other more focused technical death metal incorporating more catchy melody in their music. Instant Classic you are not