Traces of the Past

I came across Traces Of The Past about 2 years while looking for bands that would be heavier than most thrash bands I was listening to, but not straight death metal, I didn't have an appreciation for it yet, and I'm not quite sure if I even do now.

Traces Of The Past is indeed a mix of melodic death metal and thrash metal. As a thrash fan, I was quite intrigued by this, but did not truly appreciate the album until a few months ago. I hadn't listened to it in a while and when I did it struck me: this is a pretty unique sounding band with lots of variations in their riffs and drumming. I believe that this is the strength of the album, it doesn't seem to follow a particular guideline, the band seems to have attempted to mix death and thrash in different amounts in all of their songs, giving a wide array of sounds which could have all been pretty forgettable if the same formula were used for all.

It seems that The Forsaken were inspired by Dark Angel's Time Does Not Heal when writing this album, in the sense that they were aiming for a unique experience in all the songs, the album as a whole doesn't add up to the greatness that is Time Does Not Heal, but I find that the song structure and melodies are vastly superior to many bands which try to diversify their sounds but stick to one subgenre. What I'm trying to say is: The fact that they weren't trying to fit into either the thrash or death scene allowed them to create something that there simply is not enough of: an album with plenty of individualized attacks, instead of a few killer songs and some more forgettable ones that follow too generic a formula.

I believe that thrash fans will find Traces Of The Past more enjoyable than death fans since it sounds more like the band had death metal as the base and added in thrash elements, unlike Testament which introduced death metal elements to thrash on Demonic. The solos on the album are quite nice as well, they are neither epic, nor overly skilled, but they fit in and are generally slowed down so there is a real melody added to the brutal thrash sections.

This is an album I would really encourage many people to get, you might not like it at so much at first, but let it sit for a while and come back to it after you've listened to many direct death and thrash bands, there's a great mix here.