I first came across The Black Dahlia Murder on myspace (shock horror!). I heard a few tracks from this album and their previous offering ‘Unhallowed’ and I liked what I heard. It reminded me a lot of bands like At the Gates, death metal, but with melodic metalcore moments. Personally I think this is more of a metalcore album, but that’s just my opinion. The riffs are fairly melodic, as is the soloing, the only thing that could class it as death metal is the vocal style and the drumming, which is blast beat and double kick drum orientated. The vocals are mostly a fairly standard metal scream with flashes of death growls, which I’m not too keen on. Anyway, to the album!
After a short intro track called “Built for Sin”, we head straight into “I’m Charming” which is one of my favourites from the album. The riff is nice and heavy, the drumming here is pretty good too, lots of very fast double kick. Quite a bit of melody here too. Unfortunately the vocalist chooses to do death metal growling at points here. Now don’t get me wrong, I love growling but here it doesn’t seem to work too well. The solo here is very cool, not overly technical and wankish, which is always good, very melodic. Overall a very solid track.
“Flies” is the second full track, and again very solid, the riffing is “crunchy” to say the least. More growling here…ah well! It doesn’t take too much away from the track. The solo here is again excellent, very melodic! The song stays heavy until the end.
“Statutory Ape” is more of the same, which can be a good or bad thing…the solo in this song is once again very good but it sounds exactly the same as the two solos that have gone before, which worried me upon first listen…
“A Vulgar Picture” sticks to the formula of fast double kick and palm muted riffs. The lyrics were the only thing that really caught my attention here, necrophilia based. Other than that, not a lot here to grab your attention.
At this point I realised that this album can be hard to review as there isn’t a lot to mention. Each track follows a formula of heavy riff with double kick / blastbeats over it, a more melodic riff and a solo…in the same key as the last solo. It begins to bore you as you listen. The drumming is nice and fast but there aren’t any odd timings to keep you interested. However I’ll give you the run down on my favourite two tracks:
“Dave Goes to Hollywood” – Intriguing name. A quick drum intro and we’re back into the heavy riff with blastbeats over it. It didn’t immediately grab my attention but there is a very nice little harmonised riff, very catchy. Growling on this track is also minimal. No solo either, this was a nice rest.
“Miasma” – The final track on the album, also the most melodic and atmospheric. A tremolo picked riff is played whilst another guitar plays chords for added melody, a nice effect when added to the blasting here. Unfortunately the solo sounds almost identical to the solo in the first track! This annoyed me to say the least. However the riffing and vocal delivery is top notch. There is a 2 beat stop before a fairly epic sounding climax begins, which managed to give me goosebumps, so nicely done to the BDM lads.
Overall I think the band would have a lot to offer in the future as they are still very young, but I don’t think the album is really varied or original enough to be considered truly great. “Unhallowed” however is a brilliant album and I heartily recommend it, especially “Funeral Thirst” and “Contagion”. Good luck to this band in the future, they have the potential to go far!
