Chuck Schuldiner Project

Friday, January 28, 2011

Structures of Death - Fleshcrawl

Structures of Death is traditional swedish style death metal with just enough originality and good riffs to be a remarkably solid CD. There are chainsaw riffs abound and a familiar crunchy guitar tone. Unfortunately, Fleshcrawl sounds markedly similar to other bands of the genre, and there are only a handful of really awesome riffs, drum fills, and vocal sections.


The first two songs are forgettable, but "Into the Fires of Hell" marks the first high point on the album, with an almost latin sounding acoustic riffs, as well as some of the best overall riffs on the album. "A Spirit Dressed in Black" changes this up with more melody driven guitar that sounds really great, but the "heavy" riffs do disappoint a little bit compared with the melodic sections. Finally, there is "War of the Dead" which includes what may be my favorite groove based death metal riff since any of the songs from Breeding Death by Bloodbath. Possibly because it just feels like a slightly slowed down, heavier version of "Ominous Bloodvomit". The rest of the songs in between are more or less combinations and re-hashments of those three songs, not to say they don't feel different, they just don't feel really different.


The vocals sound like typical death growls that don't have the same power or depth as say, Santa Muerte's death growls. The "normal" screaming is raspy without successfully classifying as black metal. Truly, the low point of the album.


The drums are played as a few blast beats, and some basic drum beats. I'm disappointed that the drums were limited to what they were, the drummer very obviously is capable of mind bogglingly fast  beats without dropping his accuracy, just listen closely on the fillers, either somebody in the studio took great lengths to make sure that the special effects / computer generated drumming was exceptionally realistic, or this guy can drum faster than I thought possible.


Structures of Death is a solid, if repetitive death metal CD that for the most part succeeds in delivering good riffs and average drums. The vocals  aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, just not stellar. If your new to the swedish death metal scene, this isn't a bad buy, but if you've been listening to this genre for a while, you should move along, a band like Dismember will deliver a far more diverse and proficient experience.


6.75/10

No comments:

Post a Comment