Dead Man Standing
The Risen

From the heart of the Ruhr area, namely Bochum, comes this quartet of eager musicians. This is their first album which goes in dark and green, maybe the guys in the back are dead men standing. Otherwise I can think of a few reason for a dead man to stand, like if he is a grim reaper like in the brilliant television show Dead Like Me or if he was frozen and leaned towards a wall. Either of these could be a dead man, though lets instead look at this album called The Risen as it is reviewing music that is my main thing not speculating in the reason for dead men standing.

Metalcore, modern melodic death metal, maybe groove metal or something like that. These genres sort of blend together into one big mass, it was a bit difficult to find a good source of similar band, strangely enough I didn’t find reviews namedropping and my favourite sources didn’t have much on that either. Still, I think that it sounds sort of typical of this genre, metalcore or whatever it is. Heavy riffing, lots of power, aggression, some very brutal passages and things like that. The vocals are quite brutal as well, in my opinion a bit too brutal for the kind of music they play. Modern melodic death metal is a good way to describe this. I think that you can look at the cover art and fairly easily deduce what you can expect from this album. Well made and well produced, not very varied though but short enough so that you won’t tire to easily.

The Rising is a good album, maybe not the most original that I have ever heard but most metal fans aren’t looking for originality but rather something they recognise. The songs are mainly good but I think the vocals are a bit too harsh for this kind of music, maybe they should have been slightly less melodic in order to fit the vocals they use. Overall though I think I can safely say that this will appeal to those who enjoy modern melodic extreme metal, I am just not really one of the fans of that genre so my opinion might vary slightly.

To me the title track is the best, not that it is miles ahead of the other tracks or the other tracks are awful just not as good. But enough said now, I like this album and I am sure that many of you will as well especially those of you who have a soft spot for metalcore. I would say that this is a very promising debut by an interesting band.

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