I found myself in a foul mood the other day, and decided to
\nrelease my aggression in the best way I knew how, short of totally
\ntrashing my house. I went into the Pierce Memorial Archives and dug
\nout one of the death metal releases I have yet to get to.
\n(Sometimes, I shudder to think how many of these discs are still
\nawaiting me in the Archives… and maybe that I’ve been a little
\ntoo happy of late.)<\/p>\n
In today’s case, out came Sweden’s own Soul Reaper and their
\n2000 debut release
\nWritten In Blood<\/i>. (As of this writing, the band is working
\non their follow-up disc, though they presently are not signed to
\nany label.) What this group does right easily outweighs anything
\nthey do wrong – and the “wrong” category has the usual complaints I
\nhave with this genre. However, this is an impressive first effort
\nfrom this five-piece.<\/p>\n
In its most basic form, Soul Reaper is a purveyor of the
\nalmost-predictable Satanic style of death metal – and even though
\nvocalist Christoffer Hjerten is placed high enough in the mix to
\nseparate him from the rest of the wonderful cacophony, deciphering
\nhis grunts still is best left to the experts (namely, the ones with
\nlyric sheets). But look past the surface, and Soul Reaper shows
\nthemselves to be a band who dare to think outside the boundaries of
\nthe death metal envelope.<\/p>\n
First and foremost is the crisp sound this group has – and if I
\nhad a listing of who was responsible for the production on this
\ndisc, I’d give them the credit they’re due. All the instrumentation
\nsounds like they’re fit into a perfect balance – Tobias Kellgren’s
\ndrums don’t overpower Hjerten’s vocals, the dual guitar attack of
\nJohan Norman and Christoffer Hermansson is well structured, and
\neven bassist Mikael Lang comes through the sonic attack well. If
\nonly so many other bands were able to strike this harmonic chord,
\nthey’d be better remembered.<\/p>\n
Second,
\nWritten In Blood<\/i> isn’t afraid to slow things down at just
\nthe right time – the title track and “Labyrinth Of The Deathlord”
\nare prime examples of this. Yet it sometimes feels like Soul Reaper
\nwas trying to stay away from the softening of their attack by
\nkeeping distance from slower passages. Granted, they shouldn’t
\nthrow them into the songs just to do so… but somehow, I don’t
\nthink this is an issue right now.<\/p>\n
In fact, this leads to the sole complaint I have with
\nWritten In Blood<\/i> – namely, the lack of contrast sometimes
\nundermines the music. Tracks like “Seal Of Degradation” and
\n“Ungodly” might have been more recognizable with a little more
\nvariety in the song structure. I have no complaints with content
\n(even if I may not agree with the messages), and by no means do I
\nhave a complaint with the musicianship. But around the mid-point of
\nthis disc, I found myself drifting away, almost starting to think
\nthat I had heard this all before. This does an injustice to Soul
\nReaper’s style.<\/p>\n
Keep in mind, though, that this is still a young band, and if
\nWritten In Blood<\/i> is a sign of things to come, these guys
\ncould well be the next stars of the death metal scene. It may have
\ntaken me some time to get to
\nWritten In Blood<\/i>, but rest assured, this disc has left me
\neager to hear their sophomore release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6677],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-37276","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-soul-reaper","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/37276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37276"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=37276"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=37276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}