Band:	Marionette
Album:	Enemies
Style:	Melodic death metal, Metalcore
Release date:	October 2009

01. The Swine
02. Silver Spoon
03. Stench Of The Herd
04. Anthropomorphism
05. Unman
06. Hatelust
07. The Slaughter
08. The Lie
09. Your Hands
10. Creatures
11. Through Veils
12. Their Knives
13. The Truth

Just one year after debut album Spite, we get to hear another jab at viciously aggressive and concise metalcore/melodeath from Gothenburg's Marionette. Spite was an impressive album for the genre due to the unrelentingly aggressive attack of the music and the band's mastery of interesting songwriting. Enemies is? exactly the same and this can be seen either as a hugely impressive achievement or as a disappointment, depending on one's point of view?

Like on the previous album, the music here can broadly be described as a mix of the Gothenburg sound with metalcore and a fair share of Contra leads. The band's Visual Kei influence is also still in place, although this can't really be picked up in the music since it applies more to the type of eye-shadow the members wear. Furthermore, once again, the songwriting is really the highlight here, with the album flowing perfectly from one scorching pummelfest into another, with melodic elements achieving ideal tandem with more aggressive parts. Ideas, riffs, melodic motifs - they all follow each other with superb timing and work within the context of every individual song. For this reason, the listener simply doesn't have the time to get bored, even though we've heard all of this before on Marionette's previous album.

Usually, a lack of originality is a negative trait in music but over here I'm willing to cut the band some slack. Sometimes you just have to sit back and appreciate craft. Marionette let their chops do the talking here and these are impressive enough to forgive the lack of innovation. With this said, only a few select bands can get away with recording the same album a countless amount of times and this is not one of them. Next time, let's hear something new, huh?