Crematory
Oblivion

The German crematory returns with a new fiery album, another one in a career now spanning a quarter of a century. Their debut album was released in 1993 and I did review their album Infinity back in 2010 when I also reviewed their best of release. Funnily enough they didn’t send the material in English so I had to read about the band in German, and that’s always fun. They claim that the band know that it is important to remain fresh and reinvent oneself and that is said to have been achieved with using different inputs in the process of creating this album, funnily enough I don’t really think they have changed much, if anything, since last time I heard them and that was eight years ago.

They offer gothic metal with some catchy disco-like elements. They mix clean vocals mainly in the choruses with darker growls to great somewhat of a dynamic between vocals styles and in the songs; it is often a cool idea to mix that darkness with such catchiness. They also use a lot of melodic stuff and many keyboards and that sort of thing. But if I were to compare them with many similar bands they don’t really stand out, they may possibly have been at the forefront a quarter of a century ago but they haven’t really kept there – I think it is safe to say that Crematory hasn’t really reinvented themselves with this album, it sounds like they usually do. And the album isn’t particularly varied either, it is those songs with growled verses and catchy choruses for most part. Oblivion is also a little bit on the long side; it could definitely have been a bit shorter.

This is a good album, it is hard not to find it easy to like the catchiness of tracks like Salvation and many of the other tracks of this album. And the modern production is very strong as well, making it an easy album to take to and like. That simplistic and catchy nature also makes the album a bit easy to grow tired with – it is not really that memorable and perhaps Oblivion is the course for this album in the grander scheme of things. Fans of the band will of course find this at least as appealing as the previous albums by Crematory.

These Germans know how to make catchy music that is easy to like, unfortunately such music is also as easy to grow bored and tired with. You soon start to notice that the clean vocals are quite drab and that the dynamics between the growls and clean vocals could have been stronger. The album could have been more varied and so on, I am afraid that Oblivion will be the fate of this album. It simply doesn’t stand out enough and isn’t exciting enough to make more than a marginal impression.

HHHHHHH