Ah, the famous New Wave of Swedish Death Metal and the bands following that wave, whether they're from Sweden or Afghanistan, have always been a modern day issue - in terms of music of course - as to who sounds original and who copies acts such as In Flames or Dark Tranquillity. To me, a big majority of the bands out there, supposedly playing melodic Death Metal in the vein of Sweden's aforementioned acts are (pardon my expression but...) not worth shit. The reason's pretty simple. If you go out there, in the endless jungle of the music industry, trying to sell something that's tightly connected to 3-4 bands' names, then you're a done deal and it's game over, man, game over! (I always love quoting some of my favorite movies...). Here though we have something interesting. Let's take a look at Deadlock...
Formed in 1997, German metallers Deadlock took some time to stabilize their lineup and hit the road playing at various underground gigs back then. Their first release was their self-titled 7'' and was then followed by their MCD I'll Wake You When Spring Awakes (Winter Recordings, 2000) which created quite a buzz around their name (and their game). That made the band work more intensively on their material, adding clean female vocals and lots of keyboard-driven atmospheres to their musical ideas. The Arrival marked the band's first full effort which open handedly presented their final product, their final sound to the rest of the world. 2003 saw the release of a split together with Six Reasons To Kill. That particular split release contained the first part of a concept, a story conceived by Deadlock and now, through their debut album with Lifeforce Records, the time has come for the story to end. Thus Earth.Revolt...
So, what is this story about, you may wonder. In their split release with Six Reasons To Kill, Deadlock speak of a beautiful world with millions of beautiful creatures that becomes gorged and exploited by... what else, mankind. 'Earth.Revolt' is the fitting epitaph to the cohesive and enthralling tale in which chaos takes over and the world as we know it is destroyed, breathing life into a new era that arises from the ashes of humanity's decimation reads the explanation written by the band's record label. To tell you the truth, I dunno whether mankind fucked up again or not but what I do know is that Earth.Revolt is one damn interesting piece of music.
10 tracks of a musical marriage of Melodic Death and probably some atmospheric Black Metal, blended with sudden slow stops that are enriched with the dreamy female vocals of Sabine Weniger (who's practically more involved in the album than your usual guest musician) in some of the songs and a dark, pessimistic atmosphere that I must admit (and I agree with the Label's comments) definitely fits the concept theme I described in my previous paragraph. You got to love the guitars as they shred throughout the album and though at points they remind me of Dark Tranquillity's latest release ( Character) they don't seem to really be hooked upon the Swedish act's style but maybe just influenced. Nevertheless it's the rhythm changes and the overall atmosphere that makes you feel you're not listening to some teenage (mutant ninja) band trying to copy anyone. The mix of influences and new ideas is done so well you'll be thrilled to listen to those guys.
I'll tell you this. When a grumpy, miserable chief editor like me feels a new CD's cool then you just got to buy me a trip to Hawaii or at least...an ice cream.
- Album Highlights: The really good production, Awakened By Sirens (my favorite), Kingdom Of The Dead, Earth.Revolt and 10.000 Generations In Blood