Abyssal Plains of Chaos

Hysteria's yet another fairly good modern death metal band that's been completely ignored by the scene at large. This little EP really is evidence of a band that should be paid more attention by the general public; this came out back in '02 and I haven't heard their full-length, but I would imagine their later work is just as solid. The band plays a mixture of melodic and brutal death metal; the former material is much better than the latter, but none of it's bad. At the band's best moments, they remind me of the mighty Vehemence, which you can consider an endorsement to buy this as soon as you can.

You can roughly apportion the first and last tracks as the 'brutal' ones and the middle two as the 'melodic' ones, though they both obviously have elements from each side present. The basic conventions of each are present: tremolo riffs, blast beats, a mix of growls and higher screams, abrupt tempo and rhythmic changes, etc. The 'brutal' ones sound like a modern brutal death metal rendition of old Deicide; emphasis on speed, similar vocal performances and the like. They're good, but not nearly as good as the more melodic parts. Now that's where it gets interesting: Hysteria's willing to employ openly melodic, American style tremolo riffs and lead guitar lines that remind me a LOT of 'God Was Created'-era Vehemence in their fragility and alt rock melodic sense. They're not as ridiculously plaintive and fragile as the ones Vehemence crafted, but the similarity is definitely there.

All the music really rests on the guitars and just form backing instruments to drive them. High/low vocals and speedy drumming are fairly unnoticeable most of the time, just used to bolster the power of the riffs on display. 'Abyssal Plains Of Chaos' is a good EP, though I do wish the band would just stick with the very melodic work they excel at rather then going for a traditional spin on death metal, but beggars can only choose when the choice is known to have been invented. Good unknown music and I recommend people give this a try. It's cool.