Days of Betrayal
Autumn’s Coldest Embrace
6.7
Synopsis:
There are a few things the Belgians do right: chocolate, beer, providing Germany an alternate route to invade France, and metal.
Review:
With a very German sounding form of death metal laced hardcore/metalcore (i.e. Heaven Shall Burn, A Traitor Like Judas, etc), Days of Betrayal rumble and growl through 6 tracks of stern, chunky metal that’s par for the course and will probably garner them a record deal if the genre holds out.
Though the mix of melodic death metal, brutal death metal, hardcore and black metal has been beaten to death, the Europeans seem to have certain flair for it. The Bolt Thrower meets In Flames meets Hatebreed tones, while hardly original, seems more suited to the grumpy, bad weather Europeans who seem less concerned with stardom and commercial appeal, but just deliver destructive music. The more honest sound of Days of Betrayal is just tangibly concrete as opposed to the hundreds of US based bands who simply throw together a breakdown, burping vocals and a quirky song title when barely out of high school.
Other than somber spoken word interlude “Intermezzo”, the 6 often war themed tracks (samples included) on this demo, while none truly blow me away (though “Transcendental Devourment” comes close) are all solidly played, decently produced and have a palpable death metal presence rather than a piecemeal one. The material seems less about breakdowns and such, but more about a consistently aggressive, sandblasting pace and bruising, death metal lurches.
This is a lot tighter than a lot of the US based Myspace type deathcore, and I imagine this lot is no flash in the pan act, and I will look forward to any future releases.
