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While the world of metal awaits with trepidation (?) the announcement of who will replace Alissa White-Gluz in Arch Enemy, a large group of bands are vying to take their place as standard-bearers of the most mainstream melodic death metal when Ammott and his associates decide to enjoy their well-deserved retirement: among these there are certainly Blackwater Drowning, a quintet from North Carolina that takes up and updates the lesson of Swedish melodic death, enriching it with several more recent nuances.
Starting from the opening double “The Sixth Omen” and “Devour” the rhythmic crescendo and the heavy melodies characteristic of Arch Enemy since the days of Angela Gossow are contaminated with flashes of metalcore (complete with “blegh”), as well as “Eye Of The Storm” or “Incubus” (in which the Japanese guitar hero Yo Onityan appears as a guest) add the symphonic deathcore of Lorna Shore and Make Them Suffer to the equation, even if not all the pieces of the puzzle always seem to fit together perfectly, between superstructures of arrangements and haphazard breakdowns.
Similar story for “Heir Of The Witch”: the cascade of orchestrations at the opening creates a “Pain Remains” style atmosphere (iconic suite by Lorna Shore), but then the riffing of mid-career In Flames appears to accompany the clean singing of singer Morgan Riley, not dissimilar to that of Tatiana Shmayluk of Jinjer; and the Ukrainian band is called into question at the end (“Teeth And Claws”, “Chains Of Ages”) in which djent-like virtuosity finds space, in a display of appreciable technique but a bit of an end in itself.
Fortunately, the mappazzone effect does not find a place in all the tracks, given that when they go 'straight by straight' (“Washed Out, Washed Away”) things work quite well, but in general the impression is that of a band that, in a laudable attempt to find its own distinctive trait, proceeds more by accumulation than by subtraction even within the same song, sometimes ending up confusing the listener.
The technical means are there and “Obscure Sorrows” is only their second full-length, but in the cross between modern melodic death and metalcore there is better around, starting with Infected Rain.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
