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Enforsaken > Sinner's Intuition > Reviews
Enforsaken - Sinner's Intuition

its an album - 50%

Noktorn, November 26th, 2011

This doesn't sound like At the Gates so much as a really half-assed band that Tomas Lindberg would hook up with afterwards, like Nightrage without even the quarter-ass those guys put into their music. Enforsaken has no ass whatsoever. Admittedly, how much effort a melodeath band puts into their music isn't super important to me, since I consider the style as a whole to be barely a notch above Antiques Roadshow in artistic relevance. That being said, there's good melodeath and bad melodeath, and Enforsaken plops themselves down squarely in the middle of the road, not creative enough to excel but not incompetent enough to be terrible. "Sinner's Intuition" is the definition of "merely okay" music, where the enjoyment you derive from it is directly proportional to how much you can bother extending yourself. It's like sex when you're not in the mood: if you give it a go, after about five minutes you'll be involved and having fun, but that doesn't really cancel out the fact that you didn't really give a shit in the first place.

Enforsaken straddles the line between pure Gothenburg and the Americanized take on the style that improved it so fucking massively. I firmly believe the best thing to happen to melodeath was for dumb, swoopy-hair hardcore kids to co-opt it in search for SICK DUAL GUITAR LEADS BRO- they took out the cock rock and replaced it with emo, which wouldn't ordinarily be an improvement, but now alongside all the solos and thrash beats there's an off chance you might actually feel something, a risk that was never present on "The Gallery." Enforsaken, though, resides in a pretty painful no man's land between Gothenburg and the US. The band was clearly formed by metalheads, which means that For the Fallen Dreams isn't going to be in their top friends on Myspace, but they're also from America, which makes a shift in that direction somewhat unavoidable. The result is that every track has like two really sweet kickin' rad riffs ala The Crown, but then you have to listen to the rest of the song, which tends to torpedo what mild, inconsequential enjoyment you managed to salvage from the cliched Illdisposed melodies.

This is one of the rare cases where a melodeath band attempting to really channel and emphasize the death metal aspect has been a pretty bad idea. Enforsaken are at their best when they sound like Emmure, not when they're pretending to be heavy, so those ominous, crawly double bass sections tend to fall flat on their face when you're really just looking for another bit of saccharine Paths of Possession riffcraft. When it's good, it's surprisingly good; between all the above average to pretty great material you could scrape together from this album, there's probably a short EP's worth of fairly dope melodeath that might be worthy of investigation if you really miss being fifteen years old. Unfortunately, you have to dig through a lot of snore-inducing shit to get to it.

Honestly you probably have enough melodeath CDs already, so I'm not about to suggest you run out and acquire one that was released on fucking Crash.

A Very Worthy Effort - 94%

Erin_Fox, October 29th, 2006

A thrash-injected wall of sinister sound ensues with “Witness To The Fall” as Enforsaken rip through blasting, bitter tones like a whirling dervish. Incorporation of thunderous breakdown sequences, gothic melodies and black metal guitar rhythms further feed the band’s tornado-like sonority, with attention paid to the finer details that make a metal song great. Stephen Sagaia is a sufficiently wicked character, his aggressive approach perfectly complementing the group’s grueling cacophony with the proper balance of evil ambience and distinct phrasing.

“Blacklist Assassin” roars with a determined vengeance, while “The Slain” offers a critically brutal introduction, leading to an overpoweringly crushing chug. Often, the group sound like a more multifaceted or diverse Kreator, but hardcore muscle rears its head in the sound of Enforsaken as well, making for a melting pot of sounds that fit together flawlessly. One of the largest drawbacks to the album is its slightly stuffy production, yet the delivery of this overtly brutal crew is nonetheless weighty as a result.

Deep growls combined with urgent axework make “Halo Of Ruin” a standout track. The powerful chugging and masterful fretwork here is only overshadowed by an ultra-tight and thoughtful arrangement. It’s difficult to see how any follower of modern metal won’t be able to get into music such as this, Enforsaken have basically every aspect a metal fan could look for, yet still, they manage to keep things very, very dark sounding. Although there are only eight songs here, each provide more than enough entertaining deviations to hold the attention of listeners.

If you’re looking for an album that’s unrelentingly heavy and extremely well executed without succumbing to trends or fashion, look no further, "Sinner's Intuition" is dark metal at its most frightening and finest!