Rockfreaks.net

Kill The Romance

Take Another Life

Written by: PP on 08/05/2007 17:33:12

Finland's Kill The Romance is yet another melodic death metal band from the country that gave us Children of Bodom and Enter My Silence, and unsurprisingly we can find them on the Spanish metal label Locomotive, a perfect choice for a melodeath band of their size.

Kill The Romance's debut album "Take Another Life" utilizes a very typical melodic death metal approach in the vein of Soilwork: aggressive in your face riffs, alternating grunts, growls and clean vocals, and bouncy riffs that'll certainly make headbangers drool over the opportunity to swing their hair all over the place at manic pace. All songs are fierce with plenty of speed and thus make a strong effect on you upon first listen. The guitars only vary slightly from Enter My Silence's proven formula, but aside from the essential ultra-complicated solo in each song, they suffer from a lack of production however purposeful that may be. This mashes the songs together so that after hearing five songs, you'll still feel like you're listening to the opening track "I'm Alive". Whilst that may not be a bad thing in the first half of the album given the individual strength of each song, it then starts to get repetetive especially because the band basically uses the same formula in each song. The same grunts and bouncy riffs begin the song, and change slightly for a bridge, repeat both and follow with a cleanly sung atmospheric chorus in the vein of Mercenary and an impressive solo. This isn't to be taken in a too negative way though because as stated before, each song can act on its own to raise your eyebrows if placed in the spotlight alone.

But still, the album is plagued by an overwhelming sense of similarity between the songs. It seems that while Kill The Romance was focusing on creating catchy choruses and fierce verses, they forgot about variation completely and as an end result, they don't raise the bar for death metal bands any more than, say, Before The Dawn or Nightrage. Nevertheless, "Take Another Life" is a solid debut and lays out a platform for the band to create an incredible follow up once they finetune the small glitches in their sound.

Download: I'm Alive
For the fans of: Enter My Silence, Soilwork, At The Gates
Listen: Myspace

Release date 26.03.2007
Locomotive Records
Provided by Target ApS