Dead End Finland – Slaves to the Greed (Inverse Records)
Friday, 28th October 2016
Modern melodic death metal is usually a sound that this scribe can sink teeth into almost immediately. Being able to keep enough aggression into the mix while providing some lighter, melodic faire that usually involves some upbeat synths and clean vocals has its merit when it’s done properly. Dead End Finland has been doing this for about 10 years, while adding some industrial effects into their sound as well.
With nods to bands such as Soilwork, Fear Factory, and even Sonic Syndicate, Dead End Finland maintain a modern melodeath feel with some industrial and symphonic backing to add some layers to it. Nothing is out of place or out of the ordinary when “Through the Echoes, Future & Past” begins to wrap electronics around your ear before moving into more mid-paced death metal stomping as the synths spiral around. This of course, leads us to a soaring clean vocal chorus. Again, nothing out of the ordinary and they build on the elements in the song to make everything stick. Some songs move a little more towards the modern end, with some nu-metal influences also rearing their heads (see “5000 Voices”) but all in all it’s nothing that genre fans should scoff at. The one thing that is holding Dead End Finland back is that for this style of music, it clicks while it plays, but nothing compels the listener to hit the repeat button after it’s over. For an album coated in melodic choruses, this is a problem. There’s just something missing that keeps it from rising to the top of the class.
Slaves to the Greed contains all the familiar elements that you expect to hear with a modern melodic death metal album. Compositionally and structurally, everything fits, but Dead End Finland still have a little further to go if they want to make their mark on the scene.
