CONGIURA lists themselves as "Melodic Death Metal" which leads me to believe that they have never heard Death Metal before. At least they get the "melodic" part correct, as CONGIURA has some pretty vocal parts, and their instrumentation is pretty too, but Jesus Christ it sounds like the same damn Melodic Hardcore shit that everyone was listening to and playing ten years ago. I understand the genre, trust me; I know bands gravitate to certain styles and they change their sound to fit that.

I don't know though, I can listen to sixteen different punk bands that sound the same but for some reason I hated Melodic Metal as a teen and, even as my music tastes have expanded and become more tolerant, I still cringe at it. It's just so cookie-cutter and really lacks character, it's just for Hot-Topic dressing-rooms and the kids writing "fuck" on park benches. Now, my the dislike for a certain genre combine a really shitty weekend may be swaying my opinion here, but very slightly.

CONIGURA released their debut album, "iBlood", early in 2015 and as I previously insinuated, "iBlood" lacks anything special aside from its silly name. It's pretty routine, hard riffs with some guy screaming leading to a pretty little bridge, maybe a breakdown, and sometimes some other dude crying about something. Or, in the words of Brian Posehn, very "Metal by Numbers". I will say that the album gets much better once the title track begins; the last four tracks on the album don't sound too bad. CONIGURA seems to focus more on the "Death" aspect of the band in the last half of the album. The tracks get a bit meaner sounding, the riffs are a little more original, and the vocals lose most of the "get out of my room, mom!" quality. "Pendulum" and "New Order" are actually pretty solid and easily my favorite tracks on the album, too bad I had to wait until the end to find out.