Daysend
Severance
8
Daysend, coming from Australia, play an extremely impressive and accessible style, combining the best parts of Swedish thrash/death metal with moody heavy metal. I really hope these guys are making headlines over in Australia, as I've never even heard of them before now. Which is a shame, as I think Severance is actually one of the more interesting releases I've heard this year. I'm sure touring with Skinlab, Entombed, Strapping Young Lad, In Flames and The Haunted has probably given them a little bit of notoriety back in their home country. Well, that and the fact that Australia's "Full Metal Racket" voted this best Australian metal album of 2003.
Daysend really have something unique on their hands here. They've got great expressive and rough yells which actually have some variation - maybe a little bit like later-era Machinehead. There's quite a bit of fantastic guitarwork here, with arpeggios and some blazingly fast solos - and even those off-kilter and meandering solos like Meshuggah. Gang-shouted choruses and thrashy verses, the talent exhibited on tracks like "Beggars with Knives" is undeniable. The entire album is an effective crossbreed of Swedish-tinged metal and straightforward heavy metal - all with the same dense sound and production as some of the more popular American bands.
People are going to complain about the vocals. They are. But you know what? Fuck them. They're triumphant in that Soilwork anthem fashion. These are great clean sung vocals, mixed well and used appropriately, for the most part. They do get excessively nu-metalish at times. And they do a ballad or two. But you can't hold that too much against them - they make up more than enough for this slight tendency. I have to laugh, because with this highly consumable sound, I can see Daysend actually blowing up to a Killswitch Engage level. With a great ear for songwriting and riff-smithing, a competent drummer, and even a talented and attractive female bassist - it seems like Daysend is poised to be one of the bigger acts in metal. I'll be seriously confused if these guys don't go on to bigger things. They've got so much mainstream potential, yet I can't imagine any metalhead with appreciation for quality totally denouncing them. Sure enough though, they will.
Such finely done music, and it's even their first effort, unlike a lot of acts that took multiple albums to get to this point. Daysend though, they've cut straight to the point and clearly defined themselves immediately. With the exception of a few insignificant flaws, Daysend's Severence is an incredible first effort that stands firmly on its own two feet. Thanks to Metal Blade for signing these guys and giving this album better distribution. Hopefully other people'll get clued in.
