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Fellsilent: The Hidden Words Groove Metal, Mallcore March 3rd, 2009 Sumerian Records
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Review
(Note: I have never heard the band Born Of Osirus prior to this review. Keep this in mind while reading the review.) Usually when labels put that little sticker on the plastic wrap that states similar bands, one would expect it to often be over exaggerated. One band that constantly seems to adorn those "For fans of..." stickers is Black Dahlia Murder. This sticker is perhaps the first one ever printed without that band name. Instead, they list Meshuggah, Slipknot and Born Of Osirus. This is really misleading... As soon as the album starts, it is clear this band takes heavy influence from either Meshuggah or the current sound of A Life Once Lost, so that part is right. The music sounds like something that might have been taken off Meshugga's album Chaosphere. However, there is absolutely no Slipknot aspect, and the Macabre style vocals take a while to get adjusted to as it does clash a bit against the music. But (and this is the part that will probably aggrivate anyone) every verse has the normal technical groove laden riffs, and, for some songs, the chorus breaks into straight forward mainstream melodic death, very reminiscent of The Agony Scene's album The Darkest Red with clean, singing vocals that sound as though they are off a Stone Sour release. While the sung chorus aspects do sound good, some lack the technical groove sound that makes up the whole album. Another problem quickly spotted with this release deals with song length. For example, it took forever for "Double Negative" to end and would have benefitted from being cut short. Instead the song is drawn out through slower interlude aspects here and there. While the song wasn't that bad, the fact that it just takes forever to end will make this song, and others, easy to hit the skip button on. All that being said, the album isn't anything that spectacular. "Drowned In My Enemy" and "Mindless Self" are rather good, and all the songs have enough technical groove moments that will have you banging your head at times. Sadly, the instrumental tracks ("Void" , "Emerge" and "The Sleeper Must Awake") are the only two songs on this album that don't follow a pattern, only because there is no chorus to be sung. Yes, this is another scream verse, sing chorus with possible background screams for effect every few songs, repeat. The song "Age Of Deception" does violate this rules of this a bit, but the fundamentals are still there since they only flipped where the singing and screaming would normally go. Even though the music on this does sound pretty damn heavy during the normal verses, this album is a rather mediocre release. The band seems to be torn between being a groove metal band, as well as a melodic death/metalcore band. But for now, The Hidden Words shows us a band that has the promise to be something to special, but only delivered a mediocre, somewhat unoriginal album, filled with clashing music throughout the entire CD that feeds off the aforementioned money making pattern that the scene kids would absolutely eat up.
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