At first I thought it was a pretty odd name for a Metal band, but I after I read about it a bit I truly understood what was behind such an inspiring name as PEQUOD, the tragic hero of the "Moby Dick" story by Melvilles. You might think this is going to be about some Folk Metal release, well, it is way rougher than that. I believe that you will find the new found roughness through and on the band's debut, "Forgotten" via Thunderblast Records.

The running thirteen years band from southern Germany issued a diverse form of Death / Thrash Metal. Whether those it accompanied slight elements of Bay Area Thrash in the veins of TESTAMENT or SLAYER, modern American Metal / Core as DARKEST HOUR or SHADOWS FALL, German extreme Thrash in the likes of DEW-SCENTED and modern Swedish Death Metal in the vein of SOILWORK or AT THE GATES, all are patched under a single pack.

It seems that each and every one of the members brought something from his own personal musical influences and contributed to the joint effort. Furthermore, the release implied of the technical playing aspects that were used to enhance the music. With those kind of attributes, one might expect for something out of the ordinary. Well, the "Forgotten" release was with a doubt a good one, and it presented PEQUOD as a strong extreme Metal output, but its efforts weren't out of the ordinary and kind of reintroduced an extreme form of Metal music that didn't go beyond any thing that is known already. In addition, the lacking of artistic melodies and solos was mostly felt as those were sadly missed. Besides some fine trills, the lead guitar outputs were almost non-existent.

I can say that I found a lot in common, and sometimes even identical, between the heaviness and pattern of PEQUOD's music to DEW-SCENTED's later thrashy, brutal templates that most of them were actually inspired by the modern version of SLAYER. I can't deny that I liked some of the mad riff aggression displayed here, especially on the DEATH technically inspired "A Vortical Experience" and the self-titled heavy brutal machine of "Forgotten". Along with those, I liked a lot the album's intro, "Bleed", that presented yet another hell of a Death / Thrash overture in the name of modern Metal. The rest of tracklist offered some solid prospects, as "Sickness", "Life Is A Lie", "...To Death" and "My Redemption", which might be able lift the band in the future. Every other track has something of its own yet. However, I have to admit that I wasn't that excited about the majority of them even with the addition of great guest vocalists as Steffen Kummerer (OBSCURA), Daniel Droste (AHAB) and Nick Kolar (COMMANDER).

The "Forgotten" album, and the band itself, have some high potential material, yet as I implied, it lacked some sense of originality as it is very close to other acts. Without a doubt that PEQUOD have a strong sound production, which is also identical to others even though in high quality, yet fitted well with their brutality. I would vote for them to come up with something even greater next time around.