Feared
Vinter

Vinter which translated from the band’s native tongue means winter is certainly what we have outside the windows right now with temperatures well below -20°C, not what I call warm or inviting. And with darkness for most of the 24 hours of the day it is even worse, maybe a good time for fear, and for cold extreme metal which is something Feared seems to be providing. Strangely enough for something here in the cold they are quite industrious with five albums from 2010 to 2013, this is the fifth one released in november last year.

With members from bands like The Haunted, Clawfinger, Battlecross and compared with the likes of Chimaira, bands of the Gothenburg style of melodic death metal alongs with classics like Morbid Angel as well as Meshuggah, it will be very easy for the one knowing said bands to imagine how these guys sound. It is quite modern extreme metal with a bit crunchy, mushy sound, quite a cold, frosty sound I would say. The production is strong, I wouldn’t call it excellent but I would call it very good. Something that is less good is the vocals which I fins both cold and boring, I am not impressed by the vocal prowess of Mr Ramos. The imagination is another thing that doesn’t impress, It is a fairly predictable album where we have an album that feels fairly standard to the genre. Some groove metal touches, some gothenburg melodeath stylings and a bit of traditional stuff with a singer who feels a bit doomy. Nothing that causes one to stop and take notice, but at least it is not an album that plays for more than an hour. One could desire a bit more variation over the eleven tracks and just short of 40 minutes though.

Not the best of albums, it is a decent album which probably will appeal to fans of the bands where the members usually reside, most of them anyway. I like many of the bands named but I never warm to this album, I just feel like I have heard it before, too many times. It has been done a lot better in the past and these guys seems to me like just another one of these bands who do what they do fairly well but stumble on the creativity and fantasy. I like my stuff good and I also want the albums to show some kind of imagination and some kind of thought behind it. I am sure these guys had some clever thoughts behind this album and it seems like they think they pulled it off, isn’t that all that counts? After all I am just a guy who listen to lots of music so what do I know? I know I have heard music like presented on this album many times before and some of those times it has been done a lot better and those times are enough for me to go a bit like “meh” when I listen to this album.

It is okay, it is quite well made but it is also fairly boring. I think you have to be a very dedicated fan of this kind of music to really get something out of this album. I am sure many people will get something out of it and that’s fair enough, as a critic and as an avid listener of all kinds of music I find the lack of imagination a bit too much to take which is why I don’t really find myself warming to Feared and their music. Not that I want to throw it on the fire for a bit of extra warmth but neither do I want to place in my record player.

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