BURN DOWN EDEN is a relatively young five-piece Melodic Death Metal outfit hailing from Dresden DE. Their first EP, "Memoirs of Human Error," came out only last year as an independent release and now in 2016 they've dropped a full-length album under Sliptrick Records, entitled 'Ruins of Oblivion'. The beggining of the album confuses me a little. To me, the intro to "Serpent's Deception" is such a strange way to start it off considering what comes after in the rest of the song. But that aside, it very quickly becomes a fast paced heavily riff laden tune that doesn't linger around or give much of a break for the entire length of the song. It's a theme that continues throughout the rest of the album. The next track, Omnivorous, jumps straight into heavy riffs and brutal vocals and blasts its way through the length of the song, piling riffs in one after the other, with some nice little linking sections to tie them together. The chorus is nice, it has a discernable melody, but unfortunately doesn't seem too different to the rest of the song, it doesn't 'lift' and stand out as much as I think it could.

"Whirlwind Purification" has fast paced and energetic riffs, interspersed with little touches of more melodic sections and epic sounding compositions. Solid guitar solo, good vocals overall. What I would call a generic, but a good Melodic Death Metal song, catchy enough at points, yet still stomping and visceral.  The vocals start picking up their own kind of style that fits much better with the music than the deep gutturals found elsewhere on the album. One of the best songs on the album, the verse riff is killer. Track 4 "Kronosphere" showcases the home territory of BDE, intense drums and riffs with lots of sections of faintly classically tinged sweep picking patterns, that do start to feel overused in this song particularly. The second half of the song if the first time on the album that they firmly step into the territory of epic melody rather than tiptoeing around the edge, and its shows how well they can actually do it, honestly feeling a lot more put together and memorable than the countless other (admittedly very good, but to frequent to make the impact they should) bouncing riffs in the rest of their songs.

Coincidentally, the following track "Artificial Exitus" manages to address these points I just made pretty well. It's not a perfect song some of the riffs lack are a little lackluster and it just not as engaging as some of the other songs, but it I think it balances much better and has a more coherent structure. "Sons of Isengrim" sees the return of the augmented sweep arpeggios again. I do enjoy that the band are using what could be described as vaguely classical theory in their writing with more interesting chords and progressions with augmentations and resolutions, but I think BURN DOWN EDEN have fallen into a trap of using certain techniques a little too much. I must say the sweep arpeggios in the chorus would sound a lot better if we hadn't heard them all already before...

The intro to "Pandemonic Overture" is absolutely killer. The little hint of riff at the beginning then the drum roll leads beautifully to a well-orchestrated stop gap. Pauses in music can be often hard to get right and require the right moments to be effective, and this one certainly is. Coming back in with the thunderous drums guitar riffs, amazing. The rest of the song doesn't disappoint as well, the slight harmony between the vocals and guitars sliding to match them is magnificently done. The chorus is punchy and melodic enough to be epic but not overly so it feels out of place of cheesy, and the song progresses nicely at the end. The breakdown section leads perfectly into the solo and there's some very nice changes of feeling during it as well. A well put together song and a great example of what BDE are capable of.

"I, Dooms Visage" has some nice riffs and guitar parts, but sort of becomes a generic BURN DOWN EDEN song. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's just doesn't stand out very much on the album. Not a bad song by any means, but not a stand out one either. We see acoustic guitars surfacing in the track "Nebula," which is not surprising looking at the bands influences, and indeed it does sound rather reminiscent of AT THE GATES at the beginning. The cellos sound fantastic as do the acoustics. It is nice how it builds up by adding more riffs on top to create more harmonies and more interesting little sections to listen in to whilst building the song up the next song. This nice little interlude in the album doesn't go amiss and is rather welcome amongst the intensity of the rest.

The ubiquitous sweep arpeggios make a return in "Cosmogyral Miscarriage," but I honestly can't complain because the intro with them is pretty awesome. The ultimate song on the album, it is probably one of the best. Has a good amount of the breakneck speed lively riffs as the core, and then a nice departure to the huge epic chorus that are made great by the high vocals. The weakest point of the song is the ending, which shouldn't be taken lightly as it's also the album ending. It just feels too abrupt and doesn't let you down from their breakneck speed enough for it to transition smoothly, but does it too much to feel like a good stop.

BURN DOWN EDEN seem to have an essence of something that's clearly their own style on this record. It's a very dense style of writing, with lots of very complex guitar rhythms and melodies throughout each song under the vocal lines and each other. This does mean everything becomes too busy, especially with the guitar multi-tracking and the noticeable panning between them. It's too much to take in as separate entities but doesn't jell together well enough to sit perfectly as a whole. They have a very fast paced and energetic style and it works for the speed and intensity of their songs sort of adding to the chaotic feeling they have between the more melodic section of the choruses, but it doesn't retain much memorability and can slip past without making a big enough impact if you're not concentrating on it enough.

I hear a lot of potential on this album. There enough good riffs on it to make quite a few more songs if they were spaced out enough, yet also quite a few that are almost B grade that made it into the album because of the density of riff they require. what I think they should to do is work of refining their songs a little more, finding the best parts that fit and making them fit together stronger and I think they could hit even harder. Perhaps partly to blame is the production, which is a little too 'free' for this style of densely packed content, the lead guitars have an edge of messiness to them and stand out from everything else so it becomes lots of individual strings weaving around each other rather than one strong cord in the middle.