The Hypothesis
Origin

Clever hypothetical name on this album, and it also feels rather clever to name the debut album Origin – perhaps thought of as the origin of the band. And it seems as though they have made an impression on some judging by the quotes that follows in the mail that accompanies this release – everyone speaking of this brilliant band and everything. And they are from Finland playing modern melodic metal; it cannot really fail when you have those aspects to work from.

Modern melodic metal, putting a death metal vocalist in a fantasy landscape is another thing I read about this album. Those are not really bad descriptions of what we get to hear – it is melodic death metal plain and simple. They have very guttural vocals that I do not think fit their melodic sound very well. The production is great, I really like the sound but the vocals are not that brilliant as I already been pointing out. The album is quite powerful, it is very melodic and energetic with decent variation on an album that is short and to the point. It is not very original though; we have heard this kind of music many times before.

They sound familiar, they sound energetic and powerful and they sound good. Fans of melodic death metal will find this album to be very good but to me it sounds like one more of those modern melodic death metal albums that we get to hear several of every year. Not really brilliant but still a rather good album, although nowhere near as special as the quotes in the press release stated. I think that the vocals are really the biggest problem because with less guttural growls they would probably sound a fair bit better.

In the end I think the conclusion will have to be that this is for the core fans of the melodic death metal genre, not really anything that reaches out to those who favour other kinds of metal music. It is good, I’ll grant them that but it is hardly anything that I would describe as special but if you like melodic death metal it is probably worth checking out.

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