Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Brother Von Doom > Relentless > Reviews
Brother Von Doom - Relentless

A little bland, but not bad. - 68%

hells_unicorn, November 27th, 2008

One of the problems with American melodic death metal bands is that most of them put out stuff that isn’t very melodic. A lot of the time this is due to the influx of bands that can’t seem to shake the tech. death and metalcore influences from their sound. In the case of this recent Dayton, Ohio offering Brother Von Doom, melodies manage to make their way into the mix. The only real problem is that often there isn’t really a singing melody, but more of an implicit one buried beneath a lot of really fast riffs played in consonant harmony with each other. Comparisons to Arsis are likely inevitable as far as the music goes, although the vocal performance is much more guttural, sort of like Max Cavalera during “Chaos A.D.” but without the funny sounding accent and occasionally flirts heavily with deathcore.

For all of the problems that these comparisons would likely imply, the band actually is easier to get into than most others because they don’t try so damned hard to be technical all of the time. The riffs are fast, the drum beats are largely blinding in speed, but all of the random sounding changeups in beat and feel are largely avoided, resulting in something that could be treated as a fairly distant cousin to speed metal. The songs do tend to run together a little bit as there really isn’t anything slow or mid-paced on here, nor does the band rely on anything other than the 4 traditional instruments of drums, bass, guitar and throat. There are also no references to clean sung melodies or multi-vocalist harmony sections, just a 2 dimensional approach of low barks and high shrieks.

The only place where this is really different from the vast array of melodic death bands in America who dabble with other stuff is the almost power metal sounding intro “Barbarian Destroyer”. It’s very short and simple, but it is an interesting twist and unfortunately something that really isn’t expanded upon anywhere else on here. Aside from this, it gets a little difficult to separate the various fast yet melodic songs on here. The most distinctive ones of the bunch include the quasi-catchy “Norse Demise” and the semi-speed metal closer “Blood Of The Betrayer”, mostly because they have the simplest riffs, as well as that the latter having this pretty solid melodic guitar solo.

Unfortunately there isn’t much else to say about this album, because it’s fairly one dimensional. As well executed as it is and as much as it doesn’t get up its own ass with all these ridiculously technical changeups, there isn’t really much on here that is distinctive. If these guys decided to explore the almost epic metal sounding character of the opening instrumental a little more on more than just a token overture on the next album, they’d be all the better for it. Their straightforward style could make them conducive to some sort of extreme speed metal variant, and they do cover the right lyrical subjects to fit in with the metal acts that play these styles, so maybe the future see these guys separating from the pack.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on November 27, 2008.