Ebony Tears

Let's face it, despite all the musical innovations and combinations that this genre of ours conjures up and exploits, the good is still outweighed by the bad and the ratio is pretty astronomical. So when a band comes along playing metal with all the reckless abandon of Jayne Mansfield driving through the Hollywood Hills, and does it with conviction, good tunes and without sounding as stale as the bagels in the coffee shop around the corner, it is the scene's obligation and duty to make sure said band doesn't fall betwixt the cracks. Enter Sweden's Ebony Tears, an unremarkable moniker, and if you're talking about the redefinition of the genre, they're doing an unremarkable job. However, what they do is take all forms of death metal (melodic Swedish and otherwise) and thrash, polish the edges with a super tight, almost industrially antiseptic performance and careen through eight awesome examples of how metal should be played and written. Ebony Tears are cut from the same cloth as Carnal Forge and the Crown and, honestly, there's not that much of a difference between the lot of them: they all let their hair fall onto their faces before churning out semi-melodic and lethal thrash/death with awesome choruses and some sweet soloing, and much like other saviours of "metal" (Gardenian, Night In Gales, the Haunted, Arch Enemy), they will see their stock rise.