Deadend In Venice – See You On The Ground

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Well, it is official: clean female vocals have fully invaded the melodic death metal genre. Over the last several years there seems to have been a steady influx of Gothenburg-influenced bands combining death growling and clean female singing, sometimes doing away with growls entirely. What is perhaps interesting about this is that there is no discernible leader in this sub-genre of a sub-genre, unlike female-fronted metal as a whole and melodeath in general. Either way, unless a band is doing something particularly unique or skillful with this, simply having a female singer in a melodeath band does not make a band interesting by itself. Sadly that’s what we have with Deadend in Venice. Their debut, See You On The Ground, is an acceptable but not innovative blast of melodeath. Despite being promoted as having female vocals, like fellow Germans Deadlock the focus is still on their male vocalist, here growler Christian Litzba. This is perhaps for the best, as whilst other singer Annabell Klein is far from bad, she sounds quiet and submissive, not really having the power to soar over the death metal riffing. When compared to other female-fronted melodeath acts, the band in general come out a bit short – they neither have the heaviness of the aforementioned Deadlock, nor the sheer pop sensibilities of Sweden’s Amaranthe. Nor do they have the song-writing capacity to match either – though to be fair both are high standards. There’s enough high quality melodeath releases for this one to be ignored, and fans of female singers will find better elsewhere as well – either in the melodeath genre, or more likely outside it.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Death Metal, Female-fronted, Quick.Play Reviews, Deadend In Venice