Review Summary: Brutal tech death that brings the brutal.
Emeth are a fairly well known brutal death metal band with technical elements. They formed in October 1997. Brutal death laced with some good soloing sounds like my thing, but in Emeth’s case it just doesn’t stack up to the competition. Don’t get me wrong the album packs a good punch, and has a good amount of straight up in your face technical playing but in the end it all comes off as a big mess that is all show and nothing original in particular.
The album begins with one of the most impressive songs on the album titled “Eleven”, it is a very brutal track, but it is also the most memorable, which is one of the major things this album lacks, memorable moments. Mixed in with the abundance of messy technicality and uninspired riffing as well as the overused chugging is a few riffs that might catch your eye, but unfortunatly it isn’t very often and doesn’t make up for the boring moments on the album. Not to say this band doesn’t have a good grasp on their playing, but they just don’t have the ability to write good songs if they could get a grip on the writing side of things then they might have the potential to separate themselves from the pack.
One section of the band that is fairly consistent is the vocals, to be honest the vocals are nothing group breaking in particular, but the vocalist does have a fairly decent range and does not dissapoint at all. The vocalist has 3 main styles that he sticks to those would be, harcore yelling, guttural lows from the lower levels of hell, and of course the mandatory high end screams. The vocalist might fit in a deathcore band than in Emeth it seems, but he plays his part and keeps the album moving along.
The drumming on the album suffers from being average and boring for the most part, once again the members are talented but they just can’t write a song where everything comes together and stays exciting in a cohesive manner. Also this album could have really used a break from all of the mindnumbing brutality, as a fan of brutal death metal myself I didn’t find this to have enough variation to get me all the way through without wanting to shut it off. There is a bassist on this album as well but you honestly wouldn’t know it by listening to this album, I don’t recall on moment where he wasn’t drowned out by all the chugging and drum sections.
Overall I give this album a 2, it suffers from being boring and unispired. If your searching for technicality stear clear of this and go for Gorod or Decrepit Birth, if your searching for good death metal from Belgium avoid this and go for Aborted. I guess what I’m trying to get at here is skip this album, there are many better things out there and to be honest I can’t think of a technical band that have found that I don’t enjoy for the most part, somehow this band managed to break that long going trend. Keep a look out for this band in the future though, if they do improve their song writing they would be an alright band at least. AVOID.
