Miseration
Tragedy Has Spoken

The tragedy has spoken if we are to believe what Miseration says, and when looking up miseration and its definition in a thesaurus or something alike you find out that it has to do with commiseration which isn’t really a cool name. Singing about tragedy and having the tragedy play a part in the musical stylistics as well makes the name even less cool, lets blame them being Swedish for that. When looking up this band I find many reviewers raving on about the vocals prowess of singer Älvestam (or Alvestam as he is named in the international reviews). Moreover these reviewers are decently positive albeit most reviews are in the internet reviewers lower range of approved ratings many around 6.5 or 7 out of 10, but there are some really positive ones as well so there might be something about these guys. There should be no doubt about it being death metal when looking at the cover and the band logo, it looks very much like a typical death metal logo and cover.

The sound is massive, you can actually compare it to an american being that it is heavy and with a massive amount of fat. It is death metal that is of both the more modern melodic touch and a more classical technical side of it, the vocals are also quite varied ranging from devilish abyssal roars to a little touch of clean vocals as well. Also the music has a wide range of sounds throughout the album as well, I don’t really think the sound brings the thoughts in the direction of tragedy and events and dramas based in human suffering or whatever the promo sheep was talking about. They are ambitious, no denying that but in doing that they also make music that might seem overwhelming much like a wall of sound when first hearing it. I would say that it is music that requires some time from you as a listener as there are many small nuances to discover and at first it may seem as just a wall of sounds as there is so much going on at the same time all the time on this album. I would say that at times it seems as though they have tried to squeeze in as much as possible in the 42 minutes this album plays for.

But is it tragically bad or anything to have? It has its moments, there are some really amazing melodies and passages through this album, and it is layered with much to discover for the vigilant. But to be honest, it is not really that good. The negatives are more than the positives, there is most of the time to much going on which makes it sound static and confused. It is also incoherent as some parts seems to be from a completely different album, it just doest join together in a logical way and feels as a jigsaw sort of completed with parts from several different puzzles. The most negative though is the vocals, the abyssal growls are terrible, and the other vocals feels disconnected from the music, like it is floating above the rest of the music kind of like a rusted tanker in the Panama Canal. I would say that this album leaves a lot to be desired and it isn’t really worth the time spent on finding the parts that are actually good.

I would say that this is one album to generally avoid and in case you have already gotten it I give you my commiserations, it is a messy album that doesn’t really go anywhere. Maybe if you are deeply into the death metal genre you might find this interesting, don’t count on it though. Not tragically bad but it sure isn’t anything that feels really worth spending much time on, there are far better albums in this genre and I suggest you take a look at those instead.

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