Character Assassination

Canadian metalers Soulscar play some catchy melodic death metal with heaps of excellent guitar riffs. On this, their finely produced debut album, most of the songs are played at a rather fast tempo, with lots of riff variation, and some exceptional solos. With just a minuscule hint of Scandinavian influence, Soulscar is a refreshing sound to the genre, perhaps being from Canada has something to do with that.

Guitarist/vocalist/founder Andrew Staehling has a knack for songwriting. His riffs are technical and/or melodic, his impressive solos make him seem like a guitar virtuoso, yet the soloing fits the songs perfectly, and you never get the feeling as though Andrew is trying to show off or anything like that. There are some very unique time signatures, and the music never comes off as being overly technical or complex, which is great, you never have to stop and say "what in the hell is happening here?" while banging your head. The vocals are mostly rough raspy vocals, although there are a parts that employ clean vocals and even female vocals nicely. The drum parts have somewhat mechanical patterns, and are played by a hired studio musician. I am assuming that Andrew Staehling probably just had an idea of what the drums should sound like and told the drummer what to do from there. Perhaps when Soulscar aquire a permanent drummer the drum patterns will be a little more inspired and interesting. I digress, the drums are more than sufficient.

With so many memorable riffs, Soulscar are a very promising band that I would recommend to anyone.

I was looking for some CDs to buy one day, and I spotted Soulscar. I had heard one of their songs before, so I decided to pick this up. And I'm glad I did, it's a pretty killer album.

This album has plenty to offer. The vocals are a pretty deep growl, although at sometimes it sounds like they were burried in the mix a bit. Drumming's nothing really spectacular but it's there.

The riffs on here are usually fairly good. Character Assassination contains some melodic break downs that remind me of Meshuggah in some ways. Luckily, they don't overkill on this element, which is nice.

Generic may be one word that comes to mind when describing this album, but it's still got it's original moments, and is quite enjoyable. It's not extremely brutal or anything, but I'd still recommend to most (death) metal fans.