Fate

Vultures

Written by: PP on 04/06/2008 02:59:15

Based on the superior craftsmanship presented on \"Vultures\", you\'d be hard pressed to imagine most of Carmichael, California based Fate are yet to escape from their teenage years. Originally formed in 2003, when the band members were still in high school, they were only fairly recently picked up by Metal Blade Records to release their record label debut \"Vultures\", an album which mixes together brutal death metal and metalcore in a fairly unsurprising way.

Imagine if Kris Norris took some time off from being Darkest Hour\'s prime axe player, and gave online video lessons to youth eager to learn his signature soloing way. Oh wait, that\'s exactly what he has been doing for at least a year now. Now I don\'t know if the Fate axe-wielders have been on or even heard of those lessons, but it certainly sounds like it on especially the latter half of vultures. Whilst the vocalist barks and growls deeply, occasionally throwing in a typical metalcore scream for good measure, the guitar work is like almost straight from \"Undoing Ruin\", albeit with slightly more deathcore-ish delivery and a more down tuned sound. The solos are incredible at times (see title track), even surpassing the melodic greatness of Darkest Hour, whilst in the technical bits elsewhere, it\'s possible to deduce impressions from their Myspace-stated influences like Decapitated, Suffocation and At The Gates.

As you might imagine, such a strange combination results in a sound that has one foot in metalcore/Gothenburg metal, and the other one in death metal. Melody meets brutality in other words, and it\'s this instrumental brutality that keeps me coming back to the record as time passes. But the vocals still come across as slightly too weak. They are versatile, sure, but they need more volume, more power, and definitely more production. Once these guys figure that out for their next album, we\'ll have an amazing piece in our hands, guaranteed.

Download: Vultures, Call Me The Apocalypse
For the fans of: Darkest Hour, Animosity, At The Gates
Listen: Myspace

Release date 07.04.2008
Metal Blade Records
Provided by Target ApS

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