Miseration

Your Demons, Their Angels

Written by: PP on 19/09/2008 14:41:23

Miseration is the new project of the former Scar Symmetry vocalist Christian Älvestam. That should already give you a hint of what they'll sound like, but in case you're not familiar with him or his former band, Miseration play a decent mixture of typically Swedish melodeath and American brutalized death metal. What that means in practice is melodic hooks injected in the midst of the serpentine riffage and a demoniacally growling vocalist, and occasionally, symphonic keyboards to add dramatic effect to the soundscape.

As a vocalist, Christian does a damn good job at sounding very similar to Opeth's Mikael Åkerfeldt during his growl parts. In other words, his voice is perhaps the most significant part of the Miseration sound, evident when his growl dominates the crushing instruments underneath it on every song. Even the occasional cleanly-sung chorus is done pretty well here.

So what's the problem, why don't Miseration receive a higher grade than they do? Well, for one thing, they're not exactly the most original bunch of musicians. The difference between Miseration and any other brutalized melodeath band is vanishingly small, and as such the listener is often poised to think "haven't I heard this last week already?". That wouldn't be a problem if Miseration excelled in their sound, but there are only a few songs where that is the case: "Perfection Destroyed" has a great combination of the destructive and the harmonious, "Seven Are The Sins" has that dramatic effect I mentioned earlier, "Chain-Work Soul" showcases the melodic death genre nicely, and "Thrones" is just tight and bone-crushingly heavy. The rest aren't really anything to write home about.

6

Download: Seven Are The Sins, Perfection Destroyed
For the fans of: Scar Symmetry, This Ending, Dimension Zero
Listen: Myspace

Release date 15.09.2008
Lifeforce Records

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