No Return
Fearless Walk to Rise

They started more than 25 years ago, since 1989 there has been no return for the French band with that name. This is their ninth album from their long history, a history during which they have managed to fly underneath our radar completely. But they do look fairly interesting if you judge by the cover art and the logo, but of course you can never judge a book by its cover so we have also looked beneath the cover and listened intensely to the music that is presented by this French quintet.

It is all about melodic death metal, or you can also label it thrash metal as it flies a little between these two. The grunty vocals, soaring melodic guitars, strong melodies, heavy drumming is all there – it kind of sounds like you imagine that something that has those genre description sound. The production from Jacob Hansen is very strong, modern and in line with what you can expect from this genre, he always proves himself to be a strong produced the good Jacob Hansen. The vocals are fairly typical of this kind of music and the picky reviewer might see this as something of a weakness as it makes it more difficult for the sound of the band to stand out in a genre that is very well populated by similar bands. I also think one as a reviewer can have some issues with the rather long playing time of 47 minutes combined with the fact that the songs are quite similar all through the album.

I conclude that this is a rather good album; they have plenty of energy despite the fact that they have to be well over 40 years old by now. Fans of the genre and similar bands will most likely find this a very agreeable album, while those with a more distance and possibly more objective view will have more trouble separating this from most of what exists within this genre. I think it is a well made but fairly typical of the genre, and I don’t really see how it can stand out to hold its own in the ever faster flowing stream of releases in the melodic death/thrash metal genre. Fans of the band will not complain I think, as there isn’t that much to complain about, they do what they do well. Though I feel as though they are making this album more as a consequence of feeling the need to make another album than as the urge to tell a new musical story – something we can see in many bands that are starting to rack up big numbers of albums.

So no good then? Well, I think it is okay even though I want more novelty in the new releases that end up on my table. I cannot really complain that much as it is well made and a decent album to listen to, it is just that little extra that makes you stop and take notice that is lacking. But the best track is probably the third one called Submission Falls but it is a hard race with the other tracks as none of them really stand out particularly much. I think that in the end the conclusion will have to be that it is an album for the fans and not so many others.

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