(TheMadIsraeli has cooked up a week-long series devoted to modern melodic death metal, featuring one band each day, beginning with Colorado’s Allegaeon.)

If you were alive, and in your early teens, in the 90’s, you more than likely found your entrance into metal via melodeath or melodic death metal.  Like I or Islander did, you probably heard bands like In Flames, At The Gates, or Soilwork, and were absolutely floored by the musicianship on display and the idea that something could be both melodic and a total steamroller at the same time.  This stuff was THE SHIT if you were a 90’s kid, or even an early 2000’s kid. I don’t think there is any disputing this one.

Melodeath, though, is now seen by many as the stagnant and lazy metal genre of choice.  Thousands upon thousands of poor At The Gates and In Flames imitators and the advent of melodic metalcore have given melodeath a bad rap from which, quite frankly, it still doesn’t seem to have recovered.  This is a real shame, because there have been some killer melodeath albums released, particularly in the last 5 years.

So it’s now melodeath week.  I will review a recent/modern melodeath album for every day of the week if Islander can keep up that pace of editing.  The criteria are as follows…

1: Must have been made in the last 10 years

2: I will TRY TO AVOID well known acts, although I am pre-emptively saying The Absence is getting an exception.

So with that said, let’s get started shall we? Continue reading »