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#Blabbermouth
Sweden's LIV SIN Announces New Album 'Close Your Eyes'

https://blabbermouth.net/news/swedens-liv-sin-announces-new-album-close-your-eyes

#LIVSIN #CloseYourEyes #LivJagrell #SisterSin #SeekAndStrike #SwedishMetal #TueMadsen #ScarSymmetry #BabyMetal #Meshuggah

You know what? If I happened to be in Munich over the 2/3 May, I’d definitely get myself along to Prog Metal Mania festival to see #ScarSymmetry headlining 😍

(Looks like fellow metalhead.club members @SOULSPLITTER are on the lineup too! 🎉)

#progressive #metal #munchen

Buried Realm – The Dormant Darkness Review

By Owlswald

Colorado’s Buried Realm, the technical melodic death metal project of multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Josh Dummer, has built a steady following since 2017’s The Ichor Carcinoma. This is largely because— alongside his role as the primary writer and producer of Buried Realm’s music— Dummer is one hell of a guitarist. Additionally, he enlists a prominent cast of guest musicians for each album, adding another layer of proficiency to his progressive soundscape.1 While Dummer’s talent and networking ability are compelling, 2020’s Embodiment of the Divine received a mixed reception from AMG’s own Twelve. Since then, Dummer has made notable upgrades through the addition of drummer Heikki Saari (Fintroll, ex-Norther) and the outsourcing of post-production duties, resulting in a heavier and more polished sound on Buried Realm’s 2022 self-titled third album. With these refined elements and the promise of further evolution, I was eager to delve into The Dormant Darkness to see what I would find lurking in the shadows.

What I found was a great album. Building upon the foundation of Buried Realm, The Dormant Darkness finds Dummer taking the next step in his power-tinged melodeath assault. The opening barrage of “Bloodline Artifice,” with its relentless blasts, tremolo onslaught, and visceral screams, channels the power of tech-death giants like Allegaeon. At the same time, the album’s overall melodicism is indicative of The Living Infinite-era Soilwork. Guest appearances include the likes of Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry) and Christopher Amott (ex-Arch Enemy), who fortify tracks like “Human Code” and “Futuristic Hollow Nation” with sweeps, dives, and wails galore. Saari’s intricate rhythms and colorful accents amplify Buried Realm’s dazzling riff craft. Additionally, Dummer’s Laiho-esque rasps intertwine with Bjorn “Speed” Strid’s (Soilwork) roars and Christian Älvestam’s (ex-Scar Symmetry) soaring choruses to add sophistication and depth. With a well-rounded mix that delivers plenty of punch and low-end heft, The Dormant Darkness features a concentrated and layered sound that is rich, heavy, technical, and a ton of fun.

For those who crave virtuosity, Buried Realm will not disappoint. Guitar wizardry is delivered in droves, with memorable solos, melodic leads, and powerful shredding across the record’s eight tracks. Nilsson’s dynamic fretwork at the heart of “Human Code,” Amott’s dive-bomb acrobatics within “Futuristic Hollow Nation,” and Daniel Freyberg’s (ex-Children of Bodom) blazing solo on “A Futile Endeavor” stand out as particularly jaw-dropping moments.2 Dummer and Saari’s merciless grooves— shredding and hammering with precision— strengthen the album’s star-studded guest list, constructing Buried Realm’s tech-heavy compositions. Contrasting Buried Realm’s unyielding virtuosity are Älvestam’s uplifting serenades on songs like “Jaws of the Abyss” and “Futuristic Hollow Nation” which present striking melodies and refreshing hooks that draw me back again and again. Ultimately, while the constellation of guest musicians warrant attention, The Dormant Darkness is filled with highlights that will appeal to a wide audience.

With its intensity and compositional depth, The Dormant Darkness could have easily become overwhelming. Indeed, the songwriting periodically suffers from overly dense passages and abrupt transitions. The disjointed vocal exchange between Dummer and Strid before the chorus in “Human Code,” for example, is jarring, as is the song’s mid-section where a whirlwind of blasts and leads stutters and starts erratically. That said, while occasional missteps somewhat detract from the album’s pacing and flow, they are minor quibbles in a record rife with strong songwriting. Furthermore, Francesco Ferrini’s (Fleshgod Apocalypse) poignant orchestral arrangements on tracks like “Ophidian Dreams” and “Where the Armless Phantoms Glide, Pt. II” provide atmospheric grandeur and emotional depth, mitigating aural fatigue and upholding sonic balance.

Overall, The Dormant Darkness is a blast. The album is the culmination of Buried Realm’s evolution and proves that Dummer’s persistence and dedication have paid off handsomely. It’s full of highlights and genuinely impressive moments, blending technical prowess with memorable melodic hooks, exceptional guest contributions, and compositional maturity. Despite the occasional minor slipup, the album’s technical and charming melodeath personality seizes my attention from the start and maintains its spectral grasp until the record’s final notes fade into the ether. With The Dormant Darkness, Buried Realm has established itself as a formidable force— one that melodeath fans won’t want to miss.

Rating: Great!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Self-Released
Websites: buriedrealm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/buriedrealm
Releases Worldwide: April 4th, 2025

#2025 #40 #Allegaeon #AmericanMetal #Apr25 #ArchEnemy #BuriedRealm #ChildrenOfBodom #DeathMetal #FleshgodApocalypse #MelodicDeathMetal #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeath #ProgressiveMetal #Review #Reviews #ScarSymmetry #SelfReleased #Soilwork #SpaceMetal #SymphonicMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheDormantDarkness

I forgot HOW freakin great #scarsymmetry is!

🤟 🔊 😲

#NowPlaying Not long ago, exactly twenty years today, the Swedish melodic death metal band Scar Symmetry released their debut album ‘Symmetric In Design’ 😊

album.link:
https://album.link/t/106181401

#Music #Metal #MelodicDeathMetal #ScarSymmetry

Charting the course to 2025: reflecting on 70000tons of Metal 2024 Artist Spotlight: Scar Symmetry:

#ScarSymmetry #70000tons #70000tonsOfMetal #ArtistSpotlight

https://metalinsider.net/columns/artist-spotlight/charting-the-course-to-2025-reflecting-on-70000tons-of-metal-2024-artist-spotlight-scar-symmetry

Deliver the Galaxy – Bury Your Gods Review

By Steel Druhm

Written by: Nameless_N00b_85

It turns out space really is the final frontier. While topics like the nothingness of death, religion, and romantic predilections of the cadaverific kind will always be reliable tropes, space has long revealed itself to be the most tonally diverse of the metal fixations, with music to celebrate its infinite beauties as much as its unknowable (and very knowable) horrors. German melodeath outfit Deliver the Galaxy is poised to drop their third offering, Bury Your Gods, to expound on the “exciting idea that humanity is not alone in the universe.” By the time all is finished, will we have set our phasers for fun, or will we be nuking them from orbit?

After an over-the-top cinematic intro, the band comes out swinging with the title track. Featuring chunky and funky grooves, a healthy dose of Hypocrisy atmosphere, and a bombastic, amphitheater-friendly mix, it’s clear that the band dreams of big things. Choruses are catchy, and tones shift between the weight of black holes collapsing and the gentle colors of passing nebulae. “Unsterblich” is a real highlight, wringing an impressive amount of melancholy from its bridge, and a constant barrage of pit-inciting chugs turning into another earworm of a chorus. The entire package is sleek, immediate, accessible, and reliable.

However, that reliability quickly turns to banality, and a mere handful of songs in, the cracks begin to show. Deliver the Galaxy’s approach to catchiness isn’t rooted in clever vocal phrasing or compositionally clever hooks, but in rote repetition, where each verse seems to serve to get to the chorus as quickly as possible. The choruses themselves also rely on the literal song title being played in a loop. “Get Down” is a particularly egregious offender, repeating the phrase 31 times in its sub-three-minute run time (yes, really) while tacked on to music with a cheesy bop that We Butter the Bread With Butter had the sense to leave on the cutting room floor. The lyrical obnoxiousness is unfortunate, as vocalist Matthias has genuine flair, delivering his lines with a feral sense of conviction and an admirable amount of enunciation, but in the long run, these skills only betray the basic nature of the material.

The compositions themselves fare no better, as the few attempts at experimentation are ghastly. “Shadows” makes a shameless attempt at your local radio rock station with mediocre cleans and a big build-up let down by the even more mediocre chorus. The strange decision is made to end the album with a meandering piano outro, meant to serve as a cathartic release to an album that never earned it. But the biggest offenders are the solos–each is positioned exactly where you’d expect them to be, and each of which bores, stalls, and goes absolutely nowhere. Not every melodeath band needs to bring Scar Symmetry levels of shred, but when your leads are objectively outperforming your solos in both technical heft and emotional resonance, something has gone terribly wrong in the songwriting department.

Still, this album will undoubtedly find an audience, and they’re called “normies”—people who enjoy huge shows where they’re commanded to “let me hear you” or “let me see those hands.” Aesthetically, I like what the band is peddling here, and the enthusiasm with which they deliver the material is palpable. But mediocre songwriting will drag down even the nicest sounding of projects, and this album is high on melody and low on death. A commitment to overly formulaic song structures and a pop radio approach to choruses reduce the listening experience to empty calories for the ears or a space suit with low oxygen in the tank. Hopefully on the next outing the band Deliver the Goods—I’m certainly rooting for them to do so.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: WAV | Format Reviewed: WAVY
Label: Massacre Records
Websites: deliverthegalaxy.com | facebook.com/deliverthegalaxy
Releases Worldwide: August 30, 2024

#20 #2024 #Aug24 #BuryYourGods #DeliverTheGalaxy #GermanMetal #Hypocrisy #MassacreRecords #MelodicDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #ScarSymmetry #WeButterTheBreadWithButter

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#MetalInjection
Members Of BLIND GUARDIAN, DARK TRANQUILLITY, SCAR SYMMETRY & More Featured In 70,000 Tons Of Metal Cruise Official Theme Song

https://metalinjection.net/video/members-of-blind-guardian-dark-tranquillity-scar-symmetry-more-featured-in-70000-tons-of-metal-cruise-official-theme-song

#MetalCruise #BlindGuardian #DarkTranquillity #ScarSymmetry