Underthreat – “Deathmosphere”
Underthreat is powered by the riff and the blast!! They bring the jams, simple as that. There is a fast and blasting melodic death element going on here: each song goes from solid, compact, marching riff to riff. The riffs practically have written all over them; “you really should bang your head, or mosh, or at least shake your head, or do something.” These guys probably like the faster Dark Tranquillity stuff quite a bit, but they employ the blasting speed way more often. The guitar rhythms are actually quite good, but I recognize that it’s difficult to be truly groundbreaking. The band uses melody in every song, but it’s not super-melodic, just catchy, thrashy, and memorable. The vocals are growled (no clean vocals), though there are some higher pitched growl-screams. One thing that is important is that the band sounds motivated and excited, like they are out to prove something: that melodic death can blast and be aggressively catchy. I have a lot of melodic death albums that I listen to, but I do not have a single one that keeps up the energy this high throughout the whole album. As it turns out, if you try to be creative, there is always something interesting that you can bring to metal. Good job, good album. It’s very promising and the band has already begun delivering on the promise.