Soul Embraced – Dead Alive
DEAD ALIVE
As you can see from the cover, there is a few things I thought of with the CD when I first saw it… Firstly it has that modern-day zombie thing, that seems to be so prevelent in todays world – I wondered if the CD was about zombies. Second, is the metal contained inside so good it will melt your face off? or third, are the lyrics about this theme – dead alive…
Unsure, I popped the cd into the ‘puter. Let iTunes do it ripping thing, and listened.
The previous two outings of Soul Embraced have been great. The first – This is My Blood – I listened to took me a while to get into it, but the grubby and more basic sound recording really made that cd pop. Solid tracks and awesome music combined on ‘Blood’ to make it a grand listen.
The second – Immune – there were a few tracks which really took hold of me, great hooks, great singing and nice metal. The rest of the second cd, on the whole, was adverage – not so much fillers, more just not as well thought out. It was definate progression, following the trend of the time to ad more veriety and melody to make the record sound broader.
What can I report. I was expected something close to mind-blowing. It wasn’t. I can usually tell upon listening to a cd how it will play in my mind. One count is how blown away by parts of songs I was.
The first run through listen had maybe three or four parts of the record stand out. Thats not nearly as many as I was expecting.
‘Crawl’ has a great riff, a nice solo section and even some singing, I think I liked this track because it was mostly what I was expecting.
The rest of the CD I liked bits and pieces, not entire tracks. Like Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions – if they had of combied all the great bits into one film it would have been killer, but instead they did two films that were overall rather adverage…
‘To End it All’ – the CDs opening song, has a brilliant rhythmic section (call it a breakdown if you would like, but it isn’t really), a solid opening. ‘Everything Reminds Me of You’ has some awesome verses with the guitars and drums doing some cool stuff. ‘Curtain of Deceit’ has a great intro. Bits and pieces, overall the songs are kind of adverage.
But overall the best entire song is the acoustic track ‘In Memory’. I have heard it said that heavy bands do light stuff great, because they know the other end of the spectrum, and it is correct here. While the song is an intermission right before ending the CD, it is different and repetitive, but all together there is not weak parts in the track.
There is definatly less singing on this record, and the guitar parts stand out as being rather good. There are a few ‘breakdowns’ or ‘rhythmic sections’ – thrown in, but not too many to be a crazy mosh show. It is actually a nice blend of metal with more metal. Not as mind blowing as Zao (okay, not really that close at all), and not as fresh as a new Converge CD.
The record overall – while not mind-blowing – was well, on par. It was adverage. But the kind of adverage you feel good about hitting on a Saturday morning. It is the kind of CD that you can put on to listen, if you aren’t going to really soak it all in. It is like ‘Concieved in Fire’, not a bad mark on the bands catelogue, but nothing completely awesome.
