December Flower – When All Life Ends

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December Flower’s album When All Life Ends does not start well. The first song introduces a problem that does ease away as the album progresses, but definitely makes a bad initial impression. The guitar work sounds slightly off-tune during the introduction, to an unforgivable and painful level, rearing its head at various other points throughout. Guitars that clearly don’t sound right when harmonizing together shouldn’t be heard on a recording, but here they are. The rest of the recording is mostly fine – very much in keeping with the traditional melodeath sound as developed by the likes of At The Gates, but still executed well – of particular note are the enormous sounding drums that rocket throughout the album. The guitar issues ease away and the sound of the band becomes much more bearable (albeit occasionally returning to an off-tune sound), keeping with the expected qualities one would expect from old school melodeath. There’s a well-played and heartfelt acoustic guitar interlude (Dying Sun) in the middle of the album, but otherwise it is a heavy, brutal and rather sinister take on melodeath that mostly works rather well. There are perhaps not enough genuinely appealing aspects to the album, and can sound a little on the generic side – acceptable mostly, but the initial off-putting guitar work don’t lend the album favours to compensate for this. However if the initial roughness can be overlooked, it is a mostly decent album.

Written by James Donovan
More: 2011, Albums, Death Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, December Flower