This is, as I see it anyway, a quintessential debut record from a Death/Metalcore band. It's fast, aggressive and lacks variety. It's listenable enough that's true, but sadly it is just begs the reaction, "meh".

These Swedes have crafted an album that really doesn't do anything special. It starts, continues and ends with barely a flicker of variety that means when you try to rate individual songs, the first few are inevitably higher than the ones further down the track listing. If you listened to it backwards then the polar opposite would happen.

STRYKJARN's blueprint is just too narrow, a Deathcore album in name, with the desire to keep driving everything in the same direction, yet leaving it oddly directionless. It's fine when first creeping into proceedings but I just can't listen to the record the whole way through. I don't mind artists that have a very obvious sound and style, but this, for me, was too much. The odd track here and there is manageable but I like to be kept guessing at least a bit by an album. Sadly "Tidvattnets Likgiltighet" becomes predictable halfway through the first listen.

In all honesty, it's not as bad or boring as I've been making out. There's nothing wrong with STRYKJARN's debut, it's got enough going for it to make it worth listening to for fans of the genre, but it's not going to lure people in in their droves. But there is enough to suggest with an emphasis on more variety next time about, who knows. The lyrics being kept in Swedish was good too, I don't speak a word of the language but I've always liked it when bands to keep to their mother tongue, it is no barrier to success, as bands like RAMMSTEIN or ORPHANED LAND have proved.<