What started as a promise ended like a promise, but what about the rest? After nearly seven years, the Swedish modern melodic Death Metal band of CIPHER SYSTEM returns to reshape their mark on their local scene and the world. Their new, and sophomore album, of "Communicate The Storm", a majestically celestial title on its own, unleashed yet another conception of the new imagery of the Gothenburg Death Metal subgenre. Led by once extreme melodic giants as IN FLAMES (Something between "Colony" and "Clayman"), SOILWORK (Resemblance to "Steelbath Suicide") and the pattern of the Danish MERCENARY, this comeback group, if it can recognized as such, attempted to make a breakthrough. However, it didn't quite come to be.

One of the strongest features of "Communicating The Storms" is its sound production made in Studio Fredman. Though rather common with its pompous and compressed characteristics and displayed a fair share of modernized produced releases, it provide a level of toughness and intensity to the material. On the other hand, depth or not, I felt that on several tracks the clean vocal channels of Johan Eskilsson were a bit driven behind. Same was evident on a portion of the melodies that sounded as if those were far behind the chunky rhythms.

Right from the first song it was positive that CIPHER SYSTEM wished to be ground-breaking. I saw it on their release, they were closed to doing so, yet in the end of the line, it was very similar to others, especially in the likes of older MERCENARY albums. The guitar riffs, as expected in the modern version of this type of Death Metal, weren't so melodic, except of a few harmonic moments, and simply paved the route for the Keyboards to kick in with a grandiose ambience. To claim that this is innovation? I wouldn't say so, but there were signs. Maybe what was different in the intensity of the harsh growls of Carl Obbel that nearly blasted my senses with his chopping gruesomeness.

Nevertheless, as I wrote earlier on, it started with a promise and ended with a promise. My favorite tracks, at least in their titles, made some kind of sentence, "The Failure Starts", "7 Inch Cut" and how about learning from one's mistakes with "A Lesson Learned". I think that in comparison to most of the material, through these tracks I felt the hearts of the band. On "Communicate The Storms", not everything in its middle was close to be solid gold and in a way sounded like anything else in melodic Death Metal, it made me interested to anxiously await for future releases.