Monoscream
Redemption

Swedish metallers of Monoscream are now releasing their debut album, well they did a few months back but I was a bit late and the album was received a bit late as well. It is the second effort by Monoscream that we review here. The demo from 2007 was well received by our reviewer back then so they have a bit to live up to with this their debut album. It is called Redemtion which might seem a bit like a strange title for a debut album but maybe they seek to redeem themselves for something or maybe it has something to do with a lyrical theme. No matter which triggered the title I would say that the album has a very interesting cover art which tells a slightly sinister story which I allow for you yourself to figure out by looking at it for yourselves because I am now moving on with this review instead.

Melodic death metal which is what Monoscream plays is a rather crowded genre and being noticed there might be hard for many of the new bands coming now, the clever thing is that they are not falling for this clean vocal and growl thing that most bands new are doing in both logical and completely illogical ways. Their vocals are all of the extreme kind in and not the deep growly way but rather croaking in a way like heard in Children of Bodom or maybe Illdisposed, their sound is modern and well produced, they are heavy yet melodic with a rather catchy sound as well. The bands of the so called groove metal genre comes to mind as being quite similar but also bands of the Gothenburg style of melodic death metal can be said to have similarities. Groovy Gothenburg death metal might be the short description of how this band sounds. The album has eleven tracks and it is 37 minutes long.

I would say that this is a really good album, it has a lot of power and a lot of energy managing at the same time to be melodic and catchy. The best thing is also that it does not sound like everything else in this genre that is becoming ever more overpopulated by the minute it would seem, they have not fallen for mixing up clean and growly vocals which is good. The raw power that they display is also very good, the many standard bands in this genre are not that heavy and that is something this band really is. I would say that this is an extreme metal band that is actually quite extreme, but yet they are quite catchy and has a very good groove in their songs. The 37 minutes playing time is also a wise choice as there is not time to get bored with the songs that are all good but a longer album might have made it more boring anyway as the variation in extreme metal album is quite difficult to achieve and even if there is a bit of variation in this album the ten songs besides the intro are not that varied but varied enough to keep you readily entertained for 37 minutes.

I would say that Monoscream’s debut is a very mature album and I would suppose that this might be the emergence of a really great band to this extreme metal scene. They also managed to blow some interesting new blood into this genre where most new bands are just bland copies of even more bland copies of a few very good bands. I can strongly recommend this band for anyone who likes really powerful and groove extreme metal, so a good album without any weak points. Redemption is a great debut album, mature and powerful and as I said an excellent start of what hopefully will be a great musical career.