Disaffected
Rebirth

Portugal again, it would certainly seem like bands from Portugal are on the rise as I see a lot of them these days and Disaffected is another one of those bands. A band who haven’t shown a sign of life in a very long time before the revelation of them signing with Massacre in 2011 and now releasing their second album. They certainly took their time between the albums having released the debut Vast back in 1995, albeit they suspended all work in 1997 due to internal problems but now they are back with an album fittingly named Rebirth. Rebirth which is an album featuring a rather nice album cover art and the press information speaks of it being a progressive death metal album which sure makes it one album that can almost certainly not fail. I mean it has a clever title, good cover art and plays a kind of music that should indicate some sort of clever thinking, it can’t be bad, can it?

Anything is possible but considering the music of this band I would say that Alchemist is the best musical description I can offer, that is of course in case you have heard the australians. Otherwise I think you can say that it has a bit of everything and it ends in a different fashion. It is embarking on the journey from a death metal location and then journeys through many different places on the musical globe, it is an album that is better heard than described in words as the amount of trees needing cutting down to place windmills to power all the computing power it takes to process all those words would be a real waste as no one can handle that amount of timber and there is not enough area to set up all those wind power plants. Did I say that the album was varied? I thought so. It has many unexpected twists and turns during the eleven tracks that we are given and if you want to count them all you will at least have to be listening for more than an hour before you can deduce how many it was. Anyway, you could say complex, unexpected, clever and with a very good sound, that is if you want a shorter description. And the band does not sound rusty after the very long break.

I like a challenge from what I listen to and this offers something of that in its complexity, the adventurous mood swings, the schizophrenic musical phrasing and the singing and the ending of course. I think this is a rather good album and I like it, it offers a lot. I knew you would think I was going to write however which I just did and there is one of those here. The band overworks very many things on this album, something that leads to the magic you were expecting disappears and leaves you with something good instead of something brilliant and that is a bit of what I feel with this album like I they have stolen the best parts and left a good but rather bland residue in my music player. Bland may not be the correct word here but it fits decently and I keep thinking that they should have stood back a bit and looked at it from another perspective and hopefully realised that you cannot make it work with too much as we are only designed to process a certain amount and if it gets too much we don’t understand. I am not saying that it goes that far but a bit too far and most of the time it just feels as though there is a bit much, a bit overworked.

So a good but overcooked album, fortunately it is not potatoes. An album for you who like your death metal on the progressive side, if you do you really ought to check this album out as it might suit you like this hat. I think it has good intentions and ideas that aren’t really fulfilled, or rather they were fulfilled but they weren’t satisfied with that and did some more.