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Schlacht

"To know how many there are wouldn't be
enough to count the grains of sand and multiply them
by the number of stars in the sky..."

No, don't worry, you haven't stumbled upon "The Heart's Mailbox" of Leggo nor will you find below the updated count of Paris Hilton's men (sic!): the enormous quantity mentioned above was merely an approximation (underestimated) of the number of melodic-death metal albums released after the explosion of the Gothenburg sound in the mid-'90s...

To this trend, the present Avatar are obviously attributable, a Swedish quintet that, after the raw debut "Thoughts Of No Tomorrow," returns to the scene ready to do battle (Schlacht in German) to earn themselves a front-line position within the highly crowded genre brought to the forefront by their more illustrious fellow countrymen.

Mission accomplished? Unless you're reading these lines looking for news on the world's most famous heiress, you probably already know that such a mission is really "impossible", but it must be acknowledged that the band has crafted a pleasant work to listen to, thanks to songwriting that, while paying homage to the masters of the genre (In Flames, Dark Tran... but what's the point in saying it?), manages not to fall into the most egregious plagiarism (anyone who has ever listened to Divine Souls knows what I'm talking about).

The band places the two best shots of the lot right at the start, namely the ground-shaking "Schlacht" and the playful "Wildflower", on which the trademark of Stromblad and friends is tattooed: just when I start to think that Ethan Hunt might be behind the mixer, the more ordinary "All I Wish Is Black" arrives (whose greatest merit is to remind me in the title of the best Pearl Jam...) and a feeling of déjà vu begins to become more insistent with "4 AM Breakdown", not to mention the acoustic intro of "As It Is", which would be an understatement to classify simply as a nod to the atmospheres of Whoracle...

The second half of the tracklist continues in the same direction without offering great surprises: sustained speed, double bass hammering away, melodic leads in abundance, never too abrasive screaming, and big choruses to sing out loud... nothing new under the sun, but the blend works very well in songs like "One/One/Three" (the most Bodom oriented), "Die With Me" (very close to the dark atmospheres of Insomnium) or the excellent final pair "The End Of Our Ride" and "Letters From Neverend" (which also features Bjorn Gelotte from the omnipresent "In Flames").

The history of melodic death has already been written better by others before them, yet Avatar show that in the year of our lord 2008 not all Gothenburg metalheads have already applied for American citizenship: if you love "heavy but melodic" metal, give them a listen, especially if you're among those who haven't digested the modernist turn taken by the genre's putative fathers.