Many Metal bands are born in Scandinavia. The bad thing about the number of these bands is that the quantity is not always proportional to the quality. SCARPOINT is a new band from Sweden and released their debut album some months ago. But do they have the fonts to stand out from the rest?

Not much to say about the band, even though it's more than seven years old. The band was born in 2000, by Henrik Englund. and Zoran Kukulj. All these years, and between several lineup changes,  the band played a lot of live shows and released a promo CD in 2003 called Oblivion... And that's about it! I searched the Internet to find out more info about them but I didn't find anything.

As for the music, if you have in mind that they are from Sweden, and that the the album was produced by Daniel Bergstrand (MESHUGGAH, IN FLAMES), you know what to except from those guys. By playing melodic Death with Nu-Metal parts, they are showing their love for bands like IN FLAMES, SOILWORK and MESUGGAH. Not a bad thing in theory, but in practice I believe (in my humble opinion) that - even though they have some wonderful ideas (just check Imposture) - they don't have their own identity. And this is not good when there are hundreds of bands out there playing the same music and the fans don't have the money to buy everything.

The production is in high standards, they have some parts that will make you headbang but something is missing. I couldn't find a memorable chorus or hook, like Only For The Week, nor melodies as infectious as SOILWORK have in some of their songs. Of course there are some compositions that are good, like Disorder, Behind The Shadows and Imposture, but overall I think that this album lacks imagination and originality.

Not a bad effort from SCARPOINT, but they have a mountain to climb if they want to do something better. The fans of the specific 'Swedish' sound will like it, but they have to continue working hard. Well, it's only their first album...