Band:	Destriers Gait
Album:	Hung, Drawn And Quartered
Style:	Melodic death metal, Metalcore
Release date:	September 2009

01. The End Of Tranquility
02. Breathing Disaster
03. Our City Sleeps In Flames
04. Accolade
05. The Iron March
06. Every Dream A Nightmare
07. Hands In Treachery
08. Heat Of The Swarm
09. Those That Demand Surrender
10. Dissolution Of Scorn
11. Hung, Drawn & Quartered

Recently I've been receiving my fair share of Melodic Death Metal releases, but here's another one; going by the name of Hung, Drawn And Quartered from the Texan metallers Destriers Gait. Rebelling against what I'm told is the norm in that part of the world; namely country music, Destriers Gait as I mentioned play Melodic Death Metal but with a bit of Metalcore thrown in for good measure. Or is it bad measure? Depends on your tastes I guess. With pretty cool cover artwork (a bow firing warrior on a fire-breathing horse, defying odds against a multitude of opposing enemies) Hung, Drawn And Quartered at least superficially looks like a nice package.

Underneath the war-themed exterior of Hung, Drawn And Quartered resides a parallel premise in the lyrics and music. Of course, you don't get much of the story considering the style of vocals, but you can sort of feel it in the music and obviously by reading their lyrics. The start of the album might blow your ears off as the quiet timid intro track almost immediately launches into the band's Melodeath assault. Destriers Gait plays the sort of music I guess you'd expect from the blending of their two styles. It's quite melodic yet aggressive. It has technical guitar-work which emits melody at almost every stage. At times it drops back to nice rhythms before quickly heading off to more, almost impromptu guitar flirtations.

Steering the music away from being an entirely melodic affair is the aggressive side as I mentioned. This is provided mostly by the vocals. As always, this sort of vocal style won't be to everyone's tastes. Vocalist Greg Webster (who incidentally was a slightly newer addition to the young band) forces forward his growl/shriek/shout blend with some nice power which will impress fans of the style greatly I would think. I'm somewhat neutral on the matter as I think he does a good job but I do prefer deeper and harsher growls.

All in all Destriers Gait have created something which I think will appeal to fans with an already established liking to this sort of music. I found some enjoyment here mainly through the technically impressive guitar-work even though it isn't entirely my cup of tea. I could say that the guitars actually take a bit too much of a front seat production-wise but I guess it's their strong point so lead with your best foot forward as they say. If you feel like giving a bit of modern metal music a spin, you could do a lot worse than Hung, Drawn And Quartered.