Symbolyc thought by themselves: if we're going to play a marginal genre anyway, let's do it right from the start. "Engraved Flesh" is consequently not just death metal, nope, it's called extreme death metal. Since death metal is already quite extreme, we're now talking about an album that essentially equals the square of extreme. Proceed with caution.
In my opinion, death metal should make people go "yuk" and bugger off. Extreme metal should simply scare people away really, really fast. Symbolyc, with its debut full-length, is halfway there. References for this band include Behemoth, Vader and Decapitated. Especially Behemoth (listen to "Oncoming Apocalypse"): Symbolyc's most convincing facets are indeed derived from such blackened death greats. We can summarize the positive aspects in one sentence, but they constitute a great part of the songs. Firstly, the superb, sometimes dual vocals that really bark out of your speakers; secondly, the Behemothesque mid-tempo chord riffing that can lift passages up to epic tunes.
All this bathes in a very aggressive production, and while the overall intensity is just a tad too insufficient to really leave me breathless, I was well entertained by "Engraved Flesh". On one or two occassions ("Wingless" and "Denied", I think), some wimpy melodic metalcore riffs kicked in, which were completely out of order in an album such as this - the same goes for some of the leads.
I'll end with what I started: as far as premium extreme metal goes, Symbolyc is halfway there. The debut shows that they're here to stay; all they need to do is kick it up another notch. I'll brace myself for when they do.
Comments
There are no comments yet
AUTHOR: Goran
Goran has been an active reviewer for years (since the old Fishcomcollective, to the brand new Corazine - and also for Face Your Underground). He enjoys - besides metal - the creative side of life, be it through music, sports, programming or 3D. You can find him at www.myspace.com/fdemets.