Cost: $3.00
'90s style technical death/thrash. The usual hallmarks of the genre are here and for the most part, the band doesn't go overboard on the technicality or get overly progressive. There are some jazzy bass runs, most notably in "Diminished" and "Mend Your Trend," and two non-metal instrumentals--"BC" is a world music sounding piece centered around acoustic guitar and percussion, and "Aimless" is 40 seconds of classical guitar (the latter is actually very pleasant). The one unusual/stumbling point is the vocals...I think I've heard similar ones somewhere, perhaps in punk/hardcore or a non-metal band--possibly even a thrash band--but I can't give any specific sound reference, so it may be easier to try and describe them. They're gruff in the way hardcore vocals could be but they're not really extreme or ultra-forced. The execution is pretty clean as they're mostly enunciated vocals rather than truly sung. Now you should either still have no idea what they sound like or you should be scared away, although I must stress they're not that bad, just very atypical. One of the shames is I have the band's earlier CD (I got it in a dollar bin, so I'll probably eventually throw up a post about it)--the lineup is the same but the vocals are much better, so I actually consider Undying Fear to be a small step down even though it's in the same vein musically. Nothing earth-shattering here, but it fits rather neatly between the more straightforward technical thrash bands and stuff like Atheist (not as heavy and ferocious as the first two and not as weird/progressive as Elements).
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