I had never heard of this band before I bought their newest release, "Sons of
Perdition," as a blind buy not too long ago. I was both impressed and disappointed with the material packed within the disc. I mean, it's not a bad album, it's just not that good, either.
And completely forgettable. Allow me to go over the album as I listen to it at the moment.
First of all, one of my biggest hatreds is the use of introductory tracks or pointless transitions/outros. To me they feel like a waste of space and time, but this is just a personal beef of mine which is something I have with the album. The first track is "Oblivion" which is mostly an operatic intro that pierces the ears and always forces me to skip to the next song. My point being, if it's going to make me skip over it in the first place (not just me, anybody listening to the album), then why even have it on there? With that aside, lets get into the actual music Wretched plays: melodic death (as described by
Spirit of
Metal). One thing I'd like to point out is that I absolutely love the vocalist, but only when he's doing his lows or when he's over-lapped his lows with his highs. When his highs are just by themselves, I don't dig them as much.
The music is pretty much just standard melodic death metal. It's good and all, but there's really nothing in it that grabs my attention right away (besides the vocals like I've mentioned before). Whenever the songs start off, they have my attention right away since they mostly have a strong beginning, but I find myself struggling to stay interested in the music. So that's my next big problem with them, the music is, for the most part, uninteresting. I don't like zoning out when I listen to heavy metal music because that means the musicians aren't doing their job.
That's what hurt me the most after I listened to this for a few times. I just couldn't get into it the way I wanted and it would just end up being background music. I wasn't really feeling or listening to the music playing, I could just hear it.
That's a big difference to me.
Don't get me wrong, there are parts of the album that are just fantastic. Some of the solos and song structures are quite impressive. I love the opening to the song "Dilated Disappointment." (I've enclosed the video for that particular song beneath this review.) It's actually not even an opening, really. The song just kinda starts with the drums immediately kicking in with those awesome vocals chanting over the sound of the guitars. But, like the rest of the songs on here, it just drifts off and I find myself zoning out again.
Another big issue I have with the album is the fact that the songs titled: "The Stellar Sunset of
Evolution" kind of bothered me. I enjoy instrumental tracks every now and then and these particular ones are quite good, but why did they need to be separated into three different songs? They blend together so well and so effortlessly that they should've just stayed one song with a single title, not chopped up into three halves to fool people into thinking that they're different songs with actual lyrics (that's what I first thought when I looked on the back of the album case, that they were three individual songs with a similar theme).
That's not to say they're bad songs, it's just that I wish they would've made it one song and left it at that.
That was another problem of mine, not many songs on here have vocals.
Out of eleven songs only about six sound like real songs with those vocals added in. I'm a big fan of the different vocal styles in all genres of metal, especially death.
And this guy does an excellent job with what he has. I just wish they were put to better use throughout this record. The last song on here, "
Decimation," is easily my least favorite (aside from the opening track) because it's just incredibly boring and the vocals don't kick in until the very end, but when they do, they sound great as usual. But because they don't appear until the very end it just feels like it's too little too late.
I will say this, though: I absolutely loved their song: "
Karma Accomplished."
That one managed to keep my attention until the very end and it's just too bad that it's so short. Now whereas this album wasn't exactly my cup of tea, I'd still recommend it to people because I know there's material in here that others would find much more enjoyable than I did, so I'm giving my final rating of 14/20 for "Son of
Perdition" by Wretched.
You must be logged in to add a comment