Six Reasons To Kill

Architects Of Perfection

Written by: BL on 14/04/2011 03:02:29

Germany sure loves their death metal and their metalcore (not to mention their metal in general), and there have numerous notable names to emerge in the past that have found themselves to rotate through my playlist occasionally like Caliban, Heaven Shall Burn and to a lesser extent Maroon (that band barely changed over so many albums that I just got a bit bored). Recently not much has really caught my attention especially since I don't listen to as much as metalcore or melodic death metal as often as I once did, but Six Reasons To Kill might be able to change that with their new album "Architects Of Perfection", within six reasons hopefully.

Stylistically we're treated to fairly standard and rather predictable guitar work in the shape of those staccato melodic death metal riffs, and some breakdowns here, and a few melodic leads and solos there. Yeah I think I listened to enough Caliban (not to mention just melodic death metal and other European metalcore) to feel at home fairly quickly, since while the instrumentals are supremely generic, they're at least well written and catchy to a degree. The pacing, when you throw the rather passable drum work, is enough to keep things flowing to not get too dull. Production wise everything has that dark, gritty, industrial european setting (no doubt aided by some synth electronics here and there - check out the outro to "Day Of The Apocalypse") which complements the agressive music. Vocals are a mix between high pitched screams, to more lower growls, to pig squeals in the more deathcore moments (yeah there are some), and even some cleans later.

Variety in the songs themselves actually is at a surprising level throughout. The album opens with a fairly bland heavy opener "Welcome To Forever", but then brings in a ton of melodic instrumentation for "My Bitterness", then switches to a very Dark Tranquility sounding "False Absolution". "My Poison" later brings out some hard rock ballad style clean vocals to a backdrop of melodic clean guitars and finally late on "Wanderin Stars" is a super laid back sweet instrumental which completes the spectrum from the very heavy to the very soft. Being able to have heavy breakdowns with pig squeals and shrieking screams one moment, to then rotate their array of ingredients to dish out something completely different in the opposite direction is an impressive skill for the band to have, though I get the feeling that may polarise their fans more than they would want (who wants a hard rock ballad with their pig squealing deathcore?). Fortunately for them they at least are able to make sure nothing feels to out of place no matter which style they opt for at the time.

At the end of the day I find myself struggling to really get pulled in by either the heavy side of "Architects Of Perfection" or the softer melodic side. Both sides of the coin come together offer a fairly decent listening experience, but individually they aren't really polished or strong enough to really take the listener to that next level of enjoyment, especially the heavy parts if you've been around for some years and know your way round European death metal and metalcore. The added variety in the track layout is certainly a bonus in my eyes and one who is keen for some new European metalcore/deathcore might find a few good spins out of this.

6

Download: My Bitterness, Perfection, Day Of The Apocalypse
For the fans of: Caliban, Soulgate's Dawn, Maroon
Listen: Myspace

Release Date 28.01.2011
Massacre Records

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