Domingo 5 Ago 2012, 18h:09
Yes this is my first review in a year.
Caedere – Corruption
Caedere is a Dutch death metal band from the far eastern part of the country. You know the area where the legends Asphyx and Pestilence came from. This band has been active since 1998. This is their 2nd EP and 4th release overall. They released 2 full lengths in the past. This EP is meant as a teaser for their new album of which the release date is not known.
I personally heard of this band a few years ago when they were opening a local metal festival. I did not see them back then and my actual discovery of this band happened only fairly recently. Not too long ago they played at another local metal festival which I did attend. I was fairly impressed by their performance and decided to pick up their EP afterwards because it was just 3 euros.
This is a short EP with just 3 songs running just over 10 minutes. The overall style of this EP I would describe as mostly Floridan in style but with noticeable traces of the Swedish sound. Lastly the groove that a lot of Dutch death metal bands is also there lurking in the back. They actually don’t sound very different from Severe Torture a brutal death metal band from the same country. They however are no copycats. It is more a case of sharing influences and I’d say that this band has less of the classic Dutch death metal groove and sounds more American.
This EP for me has one obvious issue: the kickdrums. They are just too loud and dominate the mix too much. There are however no other issues with the mix. The bass guitar is audible and has a nice tone. The guitars sound decent albeit a bit too digital.
The instrumental part of this EP is rather varied. There is no constant blasting, the guitars play varied riffs going from tremolo picking to more groove based slower paced riffing. The bass guitar is surprisingly technical and does not just follow the guitars. In fact sometimes the bass seemingly breaks free and becomes the lead instrument. However these instruments only get to shine when the drummer doesn’t push everything out of the way with his kickdrums. The vocals are a bit bland. The vocals are in the same vein as most modern brutal death metal bands. No pig squealing however. I am not very fond of this style of vocals. Fortunately there is also a backing vocalist who performs higher shrieks. This changes things up a little and makes it quite a bit better in the vocals department.
The songs themselves are fairly decent. There are plenty of tempo changes but the pace never really becomes less than mid-paced. There is a decent amount of energy however the songs are not very memorable at the same time. Again it seems that the kickdrums are the primary cause of this problem. I am pretty sure I would enjoy the songwriting more if not for this. At the same time it’s the style of this band that is less about catchiness compared with old school death metal. However that’s a trade that this style makes for brutality, the kind of energy and atmosphere. It should thus not really be compared with OSDM. If you look at this release from such a vantage point I’d say that this is above average for its field.
Overall I’d say that this is a decent EP suffering from one big problem. In the other areas I’d say that there is no real issue but at the same time never really grabs me either. For a couple bucks it’s worth checking it out. Live this band however is quite a bit better and their material shines quite a bit more. Definitely worth checking out if they appear near you and in the end this is a positive sign. If a band sounds better live, maybe they will get that energy decently on a release in the future. In the end i think 6.8 is more and less how i feel about this scoring wise.
caederemorbid angelcannibal corpsedeathkreatorsodomdarkthroneburzumneurosis