While Melodic Death Metal has been one of metal's most popular genres since its inception in the early 1990's, in recent years it has experienced a bit of a culling of the herd, as copycats sprung up like weeds in the early 2000's and labels started cashing in on this new Hot Topic-sponsored phenomenon, taking the genre to an inevitable saturation point and leaving bands to try and stay afloat by integrating varying forms of progressive and technical elements.  Here we have the young German Melo-Death outfit BURN DOWN EDEN, who, despite some growing pains, succeed in creating a space for themselves with "Liberticidal", their second full-length album, which takes the technical brilliance and classically-inspired flare of a progressive power metal band like WINTERSUN and applies it to the Gothenburg framework to create something somewhat unique.

That influence is no better heard than on the opening track, "Dystopic Endzeit Panorama", which includes some flying arpeggios right out of the gate and some excellent interplay between guitarists William and Tom.  "Grotesque Satisfaction" is Death Metal in strict Gothenburg terms with a nice swept-arpeggio repeating hook underneath some double kicks and tremolo-picked rhythms.  Vocalist Pether shines with an almost Alexi Laiho-style attitude on songs like "Of Fortress, Deceit & Dissolution" and "Succubus", which mine the Finnish approach to Melodic Death Metal with great success.

Like fellow German Melo-Death bands HEAVEN SHALL BURN or SOUL DEMISE, BURN DOWN EDEN also take heavily from the AT THE GATES model, but opt for less Deathcore breakdowns and more BLACK DAHLIA MURDER-inspired chaos, heard on burners like "Eternal Youth", "Misled Psychogenesis" and "Daemmerung", the latter of which is a borderline Black Metal affair, with relentless blasts and impressive screams from Pether that are vocalized entirely in German.

As far as the album concept, "Liberticide" is a bit of a mystery (despite a sufficiently brutal album cover) and with a few different flavors of Death Metal on here, the cohesiveness overall could be improved.  The album seems to alternate between Prog/Power ("Melodies of Memento") to Horror ("A Tale of Deviant Hypocrises") to borderline Viking Metal on the epic closer "The Carnage Caused By Megalomaniac Gods", a song with monster chorus that would be at home on an early AMON AMARTH album.  That's not necessarily a bad thing though, as BURN DOWN EDEN have illustrated that they can do a lot of things very, very well and that may just be the way they will stick out in this crowded genre.<