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All Trays For Venom

Burned By Blackened Sun

Written by: PP on 26/06/2012 06:58:18

All Trays For Venom from Århus, Denmark is one of the latest signings of the quickly expanding Danish metal label Mighty Music. They are also one of the more unoriginal bands to have been snatched by the label, as the entirety of their sound presented on their debut album "Burned By Blackened Sun" is based almost note-by-note on the material written by Killswitch Engage during their heyday as the kings of melodic metalcore.

Though the screamed vocals are a little less developed and in many cases harsher than what you're used to hearing from Killswitch, as soon as they are mellowed down to a melancholic clean croon with roughened patches here and there, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that "Alive Or Just Breathing" and "The End Of Heartache" are among the favorite albums by the members staffing this band.

That need not always be a bad thing, however, and as long as you're fine with Killswitch's (or why not also All That Remains') approach to melodic metalcore, All Trays For Venom do a reasonably good job at cloning their sound without sounding all too derivative and generic, like many of their more contemporary peers overseas do with their mechanical and compressed soundscapes. "This Love Is Damned To Hell", for instance, is really catchy for a heavy metalcore track precisely thanks to the melancholic sequence that is injected around the chorus timings, both by the guitar and the vocals. In fact, it's a repeating theme across the album: they have some aggressive metalcore riffing that some will undoubtedly refer to as 'killer' leads or 'ripping' guitars such as on "The Revenge Of Dr. Phil", which is then followed by a calmer chorus that's designed to reel in the listener fully if he was hooked by guitars and screamed vocals in the verses already. Jacob Bredahl's production gives it the crisp and clear sound that it needs to succeed in this department, because without solid production and the tight instrumentalism that it offers, All Trays For Venom would almost certainly fail in their approach to writing metalcore.

That being said, you can't help but think that it is all a little too 2005 to be properly relevant in 2012. After all, haven't we heard this exact album done precisely in this manner at least a hundred times since then? That's going to be the biggest hurdle that All Trays For Venom need to overcome if they are to be successful, because had this come out when this type of metalcore was peaking, they'd have no trouble penetrating the international market with this release. Today, however, the saturation is intense, so even though there are solid songs on the album, there's a very real danger of it disappearing into the grey mass of similar-sounding albums from the past few years.

Download: This Love Is Damned To Hell,
For the fans of: Killswitch Engage, All That Remains
Listen: Facebook

Release date 16.04.2012
Mighty Music / Target