Upon reading the name of this band for the first time, I immediately lost myself in a minor frenzy of World War Two related excitement. Surely the ‘scars’ on Murmansk involved would be those inflicted upon this unfortunate Russian city in the early 1940s. Having done my best to read through some French interviews, it appears that to an extent, the band’s name does of course relate to this context. To my slight disappointment, however, the WW2 connections seem to end there rather than being the central focus of their approach. Another Hail of Bullets they are not then. Yet for a band from the sunny south-western French city of Bayonne, they do have a rather surprising desire to perform dark death metal.
An industrial, Terminator-style intro quickly segues into the stop-start chugging of opener, ‘Hate Mask’. Despite some generic barks and a mechanical production, some interesting lead parts and capable musicianship set out Scars On Murmansk as an engaging enough proposition in this first track of their debut album. Combining melody, thrash sensibilities and some uncomplicated semi-ethereal digressions, their music is certainly a mixed bag. A number of tempo changes and groove further characterise the approach here. ‘The Eye Within’ incorporates some snazzy, slightly discordant riffs and interludes although as with the opener, nothing truly off-the-wall appears. Whilst all the ingredients are here – from frantic flashes to chugging and blasting – there is nothing wildly frenetic, insane or absorbing on offer. Musically, the band’s brand of death metal is quite standard, and any attempt at brutality seems tempered by the musicians’ inclination towards unremarkable groove. An additional lack of vibrancy in the heavy parts also does not help to elevate Scars On Murmansk’s vision.
This last view is supported in the context of a track like ‘Buried Dreams’. Drawing on some slow, ‘serial killer picking’ similar to Slayer’s ‘Spill the Blood’, the track fails to pull off the vibe that the band so obviously intended to convey here. Slayer had Jeff Hanneman’s unique writing and playing to conjure up an unnerving contrast; Scars On Murmansk, whilst ambitious in their approach, have a fairly generic strand of dry death metal as the meat to accompany their veg. An unfair comparison, perhaps, but that’s how it feels. Overall, there are some bright moments on ‘Into Dead Lights’ such as ‘Evil Comes’ and ‘The End of a Trip’ to name a couple but many of the tracks seem quite formulaic and devoid of real clout. Half of the band members came to Scars On Murmansk from the ‘death/industrial metal’ band Hypnosis, whilst the other half emigrated from the ‘symphonic/gothic metal’ group, Silent Opera. This diversity of backgrounds has almost certainly impacted upon the interpretation of death metal on ‘Into Dead Lights’ though the end result is paradoxically conventional.
Whilst avoiding the pigeon-holes of ‘melodic’, ‘brutal’ or ‘progressive’, Scars On Murmansk’s mélange fails to ignite the kind of feeling that great death metal should. ‘Into Dead Lights’ is by no means a bad album but simply one which doesn’t quite do it for me – production or composition-wise. I’m sure it will have its fans but to these ears, the accomplished French quartet has created a rather automated piece of death metal.
(6.5/10 Jamie Wilson)
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