Throwing everything but the kitchen sink (and sometimes even that) into your overall sound can be a recipe for disaster and you have to be an accomplished musician to pull it off and not have the result sounding like an absolute mess. Either that or it takes 6-8 musicians to achieve what you want and you know what they say about too many cooks? Enough of the cooking metaphors and onto Foretoken who are a new entity but one not without pedigree. Essentially a duo comprising of Steve Redmond guitars and orchestrations and Dan Cooley lyrics and vocals (both of Cyaegha). These 2 USA based gents have also got Hannes Grossmann (Triptykon, Hate Eternal etc) on drum duties to help them out on this debut album which thankfully ticks all the right boxes.
So how to describe the sound which has so much going on in it? Essentially this is melodic death metal but with a blackened vocal rasp making it far from safe sounding and disingenuous from countless other bands. Opener ‘Bewildering Duress’ is neither too much to take in or a chore to listen to and the trio set about with choppy guitar and drumming patterns with a thrashy and at times technical furrow about them. With some very proficient melodic leads and chops this takes in everything from a bit of Children Of Bodom (or whatever the hell they are called now) through to more modern shredders such as Bloodshot Dawn & Arsis, James Malone of whom is drafted in for a guitar solo on one track. We mentioned orchestrations and it is on second number ‘The Retribution’ which they really hone in and add elements of everything from Epica to Fleshgod Apocalypse, Carach Angren and SepticFlesh as well as Melechesh centred as they are on Middle Eastern sounding motifs. It’s definitely accomplished stuff and although it does have your head spinning to a certain degree it’s certainly not too convoluted to enjoy and bang along to.
The 6 tracks here range from a short sharp 3-minute running time to a couple clocking in at around the 11 mark. They manage to keep up the impetus of the lengthier ones without coming across as sterile and boring and keep things galloping away in a rampant fist-pumping manner throughout the entire album. Atmospheres are strong and cultures are embraced from the aforementioned Arabic sounding swirls to Norse, Celtic and even Hindu making it a melting pot of ideas in more ways than one. Even with this all-in mind, that possible disaster mentioned at the beginning never rears its ugly head and this is much more straightforward to take in than one could expect, making sense even on 1st spin and growing in calibre and accessibility on each successive play. Far from being jack of all trades and masters of none the result is an exciting album with appeal to many across the extreme music spectrum and you can’t say fairer than that really.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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