This had been in a local bargain bin for several months--I even remember looking it up online when I first saw it, but the band's overall emo/gothic appearance and the Slipknot shirt of one of the members didn't make me particularly interested. I finally ended up buying it because I needed to spend a few extra bucks to get 20% off a $25 purchase at the store and had exhausted my other bargain bin options.
While the music overall isn't really to my taste, I can say that is is nowhere near as bad as I was expecting from some of the band pictures online (the one used for the CD isn't quite as concerning). Not great, but at least it's some sort of actual metal. Most songs tend to be some sort of progressive-ish metal made more extreme through lots of melodic death metal parts, and with varying amounts of power/heavy, gothic, and modern thrash (ala The Haunted) influences added. Because of all the additional elements and the clean main vox they don't end up being terribly close soundwise, but due to the sound of the melodic DM parts and considering how the frontman's stage name is Alexi, I would strongly guess that Children of Bodom was an influence here.
The kitchen sink metal nature of the music with all the various influences sometimes makes this a frustrating listen. Yes, there are some nice power/speed metal passages on the disc (a lot of a solos are in a more classic metal style, like the tasty twin guitar part in "In Memory") and even a lot of the melodic DM stuff is ok for what it is, but all the decent parts are inevitably interrupted up by a stylistic changes within the space of a single song. Sadly, there are also some occasional rockish sections where they decided to sound how their band pictures look (i.e. reminiscent of My Chemical Romance or A.F.I.), which I have zero need for. I'm not fond of the backing vox which punctuate many of the death metal parts either. At their super-forced worst, they unnecessarily dirty up things with core/screamo influences, and when they're more restrained and raspier, I'd rather not have them at all if they're not going to be the main vocals.
Looking up this band online yields some unflattering band photos, and several reviews/distro descriptions which I think severely overemphasize the straightforward and classic metal elements that are admittedly here. I would say this falls in between, in the realm of "OK at times."
