### Ruin Of Remembrance: Second world

#### 21/05/12 || Smalley

So, we got the full-length debut from Ruin Of Remembrance here, a bunch of German melo death-ers, and it starts off intriguingly enough, with kind of a joke track. It’s some cheesy, Gothy synthwork, set up against a pointless tornado siren in the background, before transitioning into a very short section of melo death riffing, before things abruptly cut out, as if there were technical difficulties. Interesting and somewhat amusing; reminds me of what Type O did once. The next track starts with some nice symphonics, mixed in with tentative, chugging riffage, which soon achieves a nice, consistent drive to it, but then you hear the singer for the first time, who kind of spoils things, since he has this black metal shriek thing going on, which clashes with the otherwise catchy, solid, energetic metal here.

Now, I’m certainly not against cross-genre pollination, but there’s a reason why you don’t hear BM vocals smashed into melo death often, and that’s because the two really just don’t fit together, and this is no exception. The two styles clash together here, and serves as a distraction, as do the occasional whiny clean vox. If not for that, “Second world” could’ve been an 8 instead (at least an 8). Oh well, they are a young band, after all… plenty more time to get it right. I mean, even legends like Immortal didn’t really get it “right” ‘til their 5th album, so, yeah.

7/10: Fix those vocals!