Upon Stone : "Dead Mother Moon"

 

There have been many words written about this band from California that have a fair amount of buzz around them. I am going to add to those words in hopes of providing some clarity about what is happening here. Words like Scandinavian, melo-death, and metalcore have all been thrown around regarding these guys. First off there is nothing black metal about this band. They are basically a metalcore band that is trying to play a more melodic style of death metal. Not the first time this has occurred. The most Dissection thing about this album is the cover art. 

They hammer at you with relentless speed and do manage a few guitar melodies to compensate for the furious scowl of the vocals that tend to cause every song to sound the same. Midway into "My, Destiny a Weapon" everything starts bleeding together in a wall of white noise riffage. They go for a more ambitious guitar melody on "Dusk Sang Fairest". What they failed to learn is that in classic death metal, the vocals have more purpose than just being an obligatory layer. When they had more metalcore elements in play things sounded more original than the death metal soup it devolves into. They drop down into an acoustic guitar in one part but it does not really flow with where the song was going. They try to blast there way out of it, but I am not convinced. 

The best riff so far is going into "Paradise Failed" The song itself thrashes with enough conviction for me. They throw themselves into another thrashing blur of speed on "To Seek and Follow the Call of Lions", with an album title that dumb I am glad I can not understand the lyrics. The album from their begins to devolve into just grateful snarling, and guitar solos. There are a few cool riffs that pop up but the rule here is cool riffs alone does not a good song make.  There is a slight rock influence to that last song. The best thing that comes from this is the vocals have more purpose. I stopped paying attention and the stream of this album started over from the beginning and I did not even notice., which sums up this album pretty well. I will give this album a 7.5,  there are a few moments, and it's well executed just not that original. It was just released by Century Media. 

pst27