The Bereaved - Daylight Deception

It seems Swedes THE BEREAVED have been beset by all sorts of bad luck in the long gap between their debut CD and this, their second full length album. You can tell that they have put a huge amount of work into this album - it sounds incredibly professional, and you'd be hard pushed to find a single duff note anywhere on it. Hopefully these days they are enjoying more good fortune than before!

I can't help wondering however if they haven't tried a little too hard. There is some evidence here of a musical split personality - one is a long-haired guitar-wielding Swede, and the other is a rather whiney, floppy haired, American teenager... From the start THE BEREAVED hurl their melodic riffs out of the speakers at you, with a lot of intensity and flair. When the band are in full flow, they are very reminiscent of fellow countrymen IN FLAMES, DARK TRANQUILITY and SACRILEGE. Tracks like `Parasitic Sleep' and `An Inconvenient Lie' hammer along with a lot of dark intensity and gusto, and there are even some dark, dramatic keyboards in use, that really augment songs like `Cold December Night'.

All too often though, this is juxtaposed against sickly-sweet radio friendly emo-style choruses which totally ruins the effect for me! `Freezing The Blood' is a good example of this - great opening riffs, but then all of sudden we are presented with a whining, angsty-sounding chorus, and the keyboards are cranked up to add to the `ultra-commercial' effect. Most of the album proceeds in a similar, frustrating vein, with great explosive riffs and intense AT THE GATES style drumming, horribly punctuated by bleating choruses and sugary sing-alongs.

I have no doubt that all band members (including newly recruited vocalist Travis Neal from DIVINE HERESY) have a lot of talent, and have worked hard to create a professional album - this may even gain them some commercial success, but for fans of intense, extreme metal (and particularly fans of Swedish melodic death metal) this is a very frustrating album.