Generation of Sleepwalkers

Sunrise, from Poland, began as a simple metalcore band on their 1997 demo. This debut album ("Generation of Sleepwalkers") came out one year later and presented a different proposition. By this point, the band were playing a kind of stop-start, semi-technical, semi-melodic death metal with occasional hardcore chanting. This record is not easy to compare to others because the band's roots give it a life of its own. It sometimes reminds me of Pestilence's "Testimony of the Ancients" (though this is only a surface-level comparison based on the vocals). It reminds me most of a record by another Polish death metal band, Dragon ("Scream of Death"-era), and I assume that at least one member of Sunrise had heard this record.

These guys were one of the few bands from the late 90s hardcore scene who could play actual death metal. Their songs strike a balance between being grounded and being chaotic, or between being messy and being engaging. There are plenty of evil tremolo riffs and tight riff changes, but it isn't as technical or as disjointed as many of the death metal bands from the time. The vocalist has a nasty, gravelly voice that suits the music. I assume he's talking about veganism, environmentalism and animal rights but you can only hear what he is saying during the chanting (such as at the end of "Dead Society"), and during the occasional spoken-word parts.

I like this record. It appeared at a time when death metal was becoming needlessly polished and/or needlessly disjointed (i.e., Cannibal Corpse and Morbid Angel clones playing riff-salad nonsense without energy or craft). The better songs on this album, such as "From The Lunacy", provide an antidote to that approach, with the right amount of jarring riffs counterbalanced with simple melodic soloing. My favourite song is "The Beginning of the End", propelled by a ruthless Abnegation-esque riff throughout. The band's hardcore/metalcore roots show here, but in a positive sense.

This is the best Sunrise record. The band tightened their sound on their follow-up ("Child of Eternity") and added some melodic death metal tropes. They may have improved as musicians but they lost some of their raggedness and righteousness. Those are traits that I enjoy in death metal and in hardcore, so I'd choose the imperfect, passionate chaos of "Generation of Sleepwalkers" over a legion of mundane death metal bands from their era.