Finland has given us some of the best, or at least more popular, Melodic Death Metal bands. This is the country which spat out ENSIFERUM, BRYMIR, CHILDREN OF BODOM, INSOMNIUM and KALMAH from its shores in the late 90's and early 2000's. In a sense the genre has become synonymous with the land of a thousand lakes. One of the newest and lesser known of these Finnish acts is PROCESS: PAIN. They combine the key elements of Melodic Death Metal with the musical style associated with Deathcore. This combination can be heard on their new debut full length, Outcast of Society.

The album's opening track, "Life Beyond Reasons" is a pretty good opener for the album, and sounds quite melodic while at the same time capturing the crushing sound of Deathcore. The title track, by contrast, is more mediocre than melodic, a fact which is owed to the overbearing reliance on the Deathcore elements in their music. Much like these two tracks, this record is very much hit and miss, sometimes delivering some fairly heady riffs catchy riffs, and sometimes presenting the listener with an average piece of Thrash infused Deathcore. If I had to say which of these styles is most predominant on this album, then I'd have to say that it definitely delivers the former type of songs more often than the latter. Basically every song on this record has some chugging guitars that many would link with Deathcore music. Even the most melodic song on the album "Steal the Grails", features quite a lot of tropes from Deathcore music. This is where I think this album falls down, and definitely where it improves. It has way too many Deathcore elements in it when the band should be focusing on the much better Melo-Death aspects in their sound. It is clear that guitarists Sami Sandberg and Toni Riihilouma are incredibly talented musicians, especially on tracks such as "Silence", which have some truly great guitar lines on them, and yet they both choose to revert to simplistic single note chugs on many tracks instead of writing some great guitar parts with plenty of hooks. In my personal opinion, the Deathcore genre got old and generic many years ago, and for a band that is clearly talented to incorporate it heavily into their music is nothing sort of disappointing.

Hopefully, PROCESS: PAIN will shed their Deathcore skin and continue to develop on their Melodic Death Metal sound. This is a good album to check out for both Melo-Death and Deathcore fans alike, as I'm sure that at you will enjoy at least half of the album.