### Sons Of Aeon: Sons of Aeon

#### 19/02/13 || Ironpants

Hail to the Gothenburg sound!!

When you´re out of ideas and you have a couple of buddies hanging around with not much to do besides drinking booze and chasing poontang, what do you do? Well, you form a band of course. Here´s another one of those supergroups coming out of Finland. Hell, those fins are producing shit faster than the speed of light, whats in the water over there? Obviously not vodka, ´cause then they would be busy drinking water.

This band is ex-Swallow the Sun and ex-Ghostbrigade members, two bands I can admit that I haven’t been listening to that much. Don’t ask me why, cause I don’t fucking know. I was probably busy doing something else, like listening to stoner rock or washing my hair.

I read somewhere that these boys have mounted up for having a go at the melodic death metal kind of music. Immediately I got that foul taste of stomach acid in my mouth. Cause normally these days, that means that some mofos have been reading the recipe for successful brewing of songs from the Gothenburg area. And here we have a divider amongst death metal heads around the world. Many of us have no problem with early At the Gates, In Flames and that sort of bands, because in the beginning, they still packed a punch worthy of being called death metal. Later on, a lot of these bands got a big discount on sex reassignment surgery, and started to produce more easy listening metal. The divider I am talking about, is where the line is drawn between you and your friends and you stop talking to each other, depending on how open minded you are for this transition.

For me, this haven’t been a problem, ´cause I have no friends, but I have many times threatened myself in front of the mirror and warning my hideous mirror image for listening to crappy happy melo-death. As any other village idiot, I seldom listen to advice, let alone advice from myself. Come on, I know how stupid I am and I would never trust myself. So, shazam! The Sons of Aeon is in my shopping cart. Fuck!! Well, we will see how this turns out.

Luckily for me, it turns out quite alright, and I can still talk to myself inside my head. Phew! It would been a real drag sitting around with no one to talk to, not even myself. And you Global Domination readers, can rest assured, old Ironpants_is there to take a bullet for ´ya all. I am a true champion. Remember me at Valentine’s Day.

When the first song, “Faceless”, kicks off I was a bit taken off guard. It didn’t sound at all what I had pictured in my fugly head. After a fucking heavy beginning it turns to pounding old-school death metal riffing. After 3 minutes of heavy pounding it transforms however to the expected style. And I have to say, a bit reluctant, that it actually kicks ass…with a tiny baby shoe, but still. Sons of Aeon has landed in the earlier style of Gothenburg sound, but with a modern approach. There is fast melodic riffing, with delicate drums and a really good singer. I have no idea where the 3 minute intro to the 7 minute “Faceless” came from? Quite bold to open up an album like this, if I may say so.

The first half of the album is actually in my outer periphery of how far I can accept the melo-death act before it becomes cheesy. The second half brings in a bit older song structures that pet my ball hairs in the right direction. “Havoc & catharsis” presents some old-school bee swarm riffing that got me going and both “Weakness” and “Wolf eyes” puts on some true homage to At the Gates.

The production is almost flawless, and that’s quite expected. I mean, there are no rookies here. These guys obviously know how to behave themselves in the studio. It’s tight and well balanced levels on everything.

Well, what’s there to say? This is hands down the no 1. album you are looking for if you are spending your nights crying in the pillow, longing for the days when At the Gates was the shiznit and In Flames still pulled out some good riffage out of their asses. I might even namedrop The Haunted here just for the fun of it…and what the hell, Dark Tranquillity. It may seem a bit contradictory to say, but here goes…today’s best Gothenburg sound comes from Finland!

- Information
- Released: 2013
- Label: Lifeforce Records
- Website: www.sonsofaeon.net
- Band
- Tony Kaikkonen: vocals
- Wille Naukkarinen: guitars
- Tapio Vartiainen: guitars
- Tommi Kiviniemi: bass
- Pasi Pasanen: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Faceless
- 02. Cold waves
- 03. Burden
- 04. Enemy of the souls
- 05. The centre
- 06. Havoc & catharsis
- 07. Weakness
- 08. Seeds of destruction
- 09. Wolf eyes
- 10. Black sheep process