Red Death

Building from a predominantly high speed Swedish foundation, the Red Death’s melodic metalcore is all too familiar to anyone who has followed aggressive music over the past few years. The number of bands currently subscribing to this formulaic and derivative approach is quickly becoming cause for alarm, the Unearths and the Black Dahlia Murders slowly squeezing out any legitimate attempts to create something fresh. Maiden’s legacy meets the more technically apt music of later Swedish bands such as Soilwork and At the Gates in a chronically harmonising tremolo mash that is indistinguishable from the wagon of metal/hardcore hybrids touring small community halls. Like most North Americans, they lack a sense of tact and taste, failing to expand upon ideas that may have been moulded into innovative and interesting pieces. Instead, they dabble in a ridiculous number of simplified breakdowns, chugging any possibility for redemption into oblivion. With any luck, the current trend towards stagnating crossbreeds will die long before it reaches the popularity of the last disaster: nü-metal.