Meet Your Maker

Yep, the world of these Danish music makers has taken a turn for the more realistic. Previously it was all about vagueness and uncertainty with silhouettes, nudities and phantoms engaged at various stages throughout their career, but when they forced the pace in 2004 with their fourth instalment, and grounded their delivery more firmly on the earth plane, they imploded and were no more.

The band’s first two efforts are fine examples of the Gothenburg school sentiments, modern death metal with alluring melodic silhouettes… sorry, pirouettes, with hints at both the technical and the progressive without deeper elaborations into these two branches. The third outing sounded a tad more generic and less inspired, the guys adding a sturdier thrashier engine to their deathly melodicisms on the mentioned “Force the Pace”, a desirable therapy which remained incomplete due to the band’s dissolution.

But here they are, back to the front full of vigour, pretty much the same line-up as before, save for the bass player Jesper Kvist (Invocator, Paunchy). Style-wise this is a more or less logical continuation of the thrashier approach from the preceding slab, a lively energetic collection of modern thrash/death tunes, the overall delivery quite reminiscent of latter-day Kreator, the vocal presence a bit higher-pitched and screechier. The title-track explodes in fireworks of sharp lashing riffs, but the guys vary things later, pouring heavy mid-paced drama (“Alone”, “Room 417”) with volcanic determination, their early death metal roots receiving a nod but in an epic Amon Amarth-esque manner, with the imposing "In a City Without Soul". Nice female vocals can one hear on the surprisingly touching lyrical ballad “Soon I’ll Be Gone”, the thrashing spree further delineated with “The Apprentice”, a solemn doom-prone march with probing hammering riffs.

Although the death/thrash hegemony gets usurped more than just now and then here, it still keeps the setting in check, most of the diversification attempts working to the guys’ advantage. This isn’t a band who are looking for wider genre-transcending exposure; this is a band who are well aware of their death/thrashy roots, and also know how to spice their approach without diluting it beyond repair. Bigger musical proficiency has been exhibited as a result, and although some may mourn the more insistent faster-paced execution from the older output, it won’t be hard at all for the fan to detect the staple Withering Surface signature.

The thing is that it’s not quite certain whether the guys would proceed in the same configuration; during the long split-up period the band members haven’t been exactly lying dormant, but have been involved in several formations, both as founders and regular musicians, like the thrash/crossover cohort The Downward Candidate, the death metallers Thorium, the doom/death hybriders A Sun Traverse… Invocator as well (the drummer Jakob Gundel)… on quite a few surfaces the guys are gliding at the moment. It’s alright, they won’t fall, they possess the requisite skills to survive the contemporary music scene traps… it’s still early for them to meet their maker.