Prey For Nothing - Violence Divine
Rusty Cage Records
Melodic Death Metal
12 songs (53:11)
Release year: 2008
Rusty Cage Records
Reviewed by Goat

Hailing from Israel, Prey For Nothing play a distinctly unoriginal form of Melodic Death, taking their influences from all the usual sources (At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity, a bit of In Flames, a bit of old Soilwork). What makes this a hard band to review is that they’re pretty good at distilling these influences, cuts such as opening blast Cowardice riff-heavy and clearly technically skilful. Of course, once you’ve listened to the whole album a few times and realised that it’s full of tracks that follow more or less the same path rarely taking the trouble to mix it up a little, it’s less impressive. Individually, songs like Overture Of Dust sound great, but one after another? No.

It’s a shame, really; as mentioned, this band knows its way around their instruments. The riffs and leads on Breach especially are excellent, pushing the now rather bloated Melodeath genre’s boundaries, whilst the likes of Dead Man’s Dream have an epic, almost Amon Amarth-y quality. Summoning Sickness, a nice little NeoClassical interlude, playing one of those pieces that you really should know but can never remember the name of, sets the pace for the almost Bodom-ish Tearing The Fabric. The Deadliest Rain has a touch of the Prog, lots of technical little chugs, whistles and an acoustic bit, whilst the closing title track takes an atmospheric route, sampled screams and wails adding a political edge to the band’s sound, and one I was expecting sooner given their origin.

For a debut album, this is great stuff. Let’s hope the band can take a step away from their comfort zone for the next one, then we’ll really have an earthshaker. Violence Divine won’t amaze you, and they’ve got a way to go before this is mandatory listening material, but they’re certainly a band to watch.

MySpace
Killing Songs :
Cowardice, Breach, Dead Man’s Dream, The Deadliest Rain, Violence Divine
Goat quoted 74 / 100
1 readers voted
Average:
 73
You did not vote yet.
Vote now

There are 0 replies to this review. Last one on Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:49 am
View and Post comments