One country that always has a steady stream of strong musicians in a variety of styles across metal worthy of attention is Germany. The five-piece Act of Creation started in 2007, releasing a series of albums independently before signing to Black Sunset for their last record The Uncertain Light from 2020. Taking their time to assemble the next full-length, they’ve signed with Massacre Records, and we enjoy the fruits of that labor for Moments to Remain. A continuation of the female protagonist story from the last record, the theme this time explores her adulthood, reflecting at a lake as she reviews an entire day that includes toxic relationships, memory loss, grief, childhood memories, as well as insomnia and circular thoughts trying to get to sleep.
Stylistically you can expect a sound and songwriting synthesis of melodic death with traces of blistering thrash – the tones and production values very potent thank to the self-produced duties as well as mixing/mastering knowledge from Dennis Koehne (Sodom, Exumer). Sharp guitar work exhilarates throughout the steady parade of groove-oriented heavy rhythms – bursts of melodic thunder appear from the axe play of Carsten Schluch and Göksel Hamali to instantly garner waves of attention during the early highlight “Under Friendly Fire”. Variation as far as the tempo differences and arrangements should keep listener from any potential ear fatigue – including the multi-layered nature of Jessica Nicole Kork on vocals, as she can do everything from whispers to clean sections next to her natural growl/scream abilities (check out her savage screams or smooth clean parts in “Confront the Truth”). You feel a deeper understanding of the second/third generation of melodic death that came from Europe during the late 90s in certain twin harmony or main transitional sequences through “Beyond Reality” and the quieter to bombastic shifts in the titanic title track.
When a record has three bonus tracks that are placed at the beginning, middle and ending of a track listing, intrigue comes to mind as to why the band had to make these choices (this scribe believes it had to do with vinyl constraints at 43 minutes for one and 52 minutes on the CD). Given that two of these are instrumentals (the acoustic “Cry of a Peacecrow” and soundscape “Into Dreams” provide aural breathers), most consumers will be content with the main content of the album. You can tell the band has sharp, intuitive abilities at songwriting, delivering diverse material that can be aggressive, heavy, uncompromising and yet still very catchy and memorable.
While many may put Act of Creation closer to the Arch Enemy style of melodic death metal, to these ears Moments to Remain has more of the older Dark Tranquillity / At the Gates nature that retains a lot of the warmth of a time when bands captured the union of traditional harmonies in spots against some heavier thrash/death riff terrain. Another Teutonic treasure that could vault up a few rungs of the underground ladder into a better following if they continue to execute quality records like this again.