Band:	Fuelblooded
Album:	Off The Face Of The Earth
Style:	Melodic death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	October 2009

01. The End Starts Here
02. Discounted Dormancy
03. When Passion Dies
04. Recipe For Demise
05. The Cult Of Ego
06. Off The Face Of The Earth
07. The Wrath Of A'ath
08. Pandemic Persecution
09. Demonized

To be honest I've never been a big fan of melodic death metal. Sure, it has cool riffs sometimes and I can appreciate a few of the bands. But the majority of the style has always seemed really bland to me. So there it was, a couple days ago, in an envelope addressed to Bas / Metal Storm lay the new output of the Dutch melo death band Fuelblooded. Of course I did what I always do, tried to give it an open-minded shot, listen to it a few times and hope for the best.

Ok, enough of my personal life, regardless of how cool and exciting it may be, now to describe the album at hand. As already mentioned the band plays melodic death metal, the thrashy sort to be exact, and from what I gathered Trivium, Darkane and Arch Enemy served as role models. Off The Face Of The Earth is their second full-length after 8 years of existence and contains a huge amount of melodic guitar solos.

The drumming is usually pretty fast, but pretty monotone as well, and not in the pretty way. Some of the riffs are really good, but the majority of them are just too soft for my taste. After all melodic death metal should be a lot death with a bit of melody, not a whole lot of melody with a smidgen of death, if you ask me.

Now the vocals are the most interesting issue that's up for discussion. Vocalist Peter Brinkman can put out some decent growls, but it turns out he prefers singing cleanly. His clean singing is pretty good, but it really doesn't fit. Somewhere in between heavy metal (ever heard of Iced Earth?) and alternative metal a ton of bands would be happy to have him. But well, the rest of the music is melodic death metal, and even though it's very melodic, his clean voice just doesn't really fit.

The production of the album is great and the musicianship is pretty tight too, but in the end this is just another of many many unimpressive bands in the world of metal.