Spineshank
Anger Denial Acceptance

Last year we got a chance to acquaintance ourself with the fourth album by Spineshank. Unfortunately I haven't been able to finish a review earlier, but now you have the chance to acquaintance yourself with this album all over again, or for the first time if you didn't last year.

Spineshank plays melodic death metal and they do it damn well too! They have a somewhat heavier sound on this album compared to most of their modern likes, without getting carried away all the way to the kinds of those really, really heavy bands. I feel 'Anger Denial Acceptance' is a soul searching album that digs deep in the human behavior, which might be the reason it's taken them nine years (an a breakup) since the previous album to finish off 'Anger Denial Acceptance'. The sound is heavier now than before and you'll get acquainted with that from the first second as Johnny Santos screams out a dark ROOOOAAAAAR as soon as the the first song starts. The vocals are otherwise a pretty good mix between clean vocals and screams and shouts, perhaps with a slight advantage of clean vocals.

The album has 13 tracks and takes about 45 minutes to play through and a part of me feels that this perhaps is the longest this album can be as it's not really varying the sound too much between songs. Sure it has the odd piano appearing and reappearing during the course of the album and on the other side of the scale an almost metal core-ish heaviness, which sometimes comes after one another. I think they find a good balance between the changes, even though Spineshank mostly play with one sound on 'Anger Denial Acceptance'. The bass is quite heavy all the way through and when they go softer they balance this out by not playing it at all. The other instruments are more varied and not as "angry" as the bass all the time. The angry bit is somthing the lyrics treat as well, with the theme of the album being how we react to loss. I can't really say I feel the theme comes through either overly good or bad but it's a good theme still.

The reason why I've decided to review this album even though it's almost one year old by now is because I really think it's an album you should give a chance. It's really good melodic death metal in the heavier vein and it has plenty of death metallic qualities for everyone that likes this kind of music. It's really easy just to move along with the music and I'm really impressed by the few times they make the huge transition going from something really heavy in to something really nice. Like the deadly heavy I Am Damage followed by the instrumental piano ballad Ploratio Morbus. They might now vary themselves too much on 'Anger Denial Acceptance', but when they do they do it really good. Nothing on this album feels like it's anything but really good!

I can't say it's one of the best death metal albums 2013, but it is one of the best from 2012. The only bad thing with it is my late review.

HHHHHHH