Aeon "Rise To Dominate"

Tracklist: 01. Helel Ben-Shachar 02. Spreading Their Disease 03. Living Sin 04. Hate Them 05. You Pray To Nothing 06. Caressed By The Holy Man 07. House Of Greed 08. Godless 09. When The War Comes 10. There Will Be No Heaven For Me 11. Luke 4-5-7 12. No One Escapes Us Release: 2007 Genre: Death Metal URL: www.aeon666.com Label: www.metalblade.de

The band Aeon from Sweden has climbed up the job ladder recently. Not only that there previous album has been released over America's most famous Brutal Death Metal label Unique Leader Records, it was still able to get positive responses from press worldwide. But most of you had never assumed that a band like Aeon would get a deal with a real big record label like Metal Blade Records. Personally Aeon was always a solid and qualitative Death Metal band for me. The band was always able to convince myself, but I have never really understood why they have been adored so much. Aeon are definitely a great band, but they will never be one of my favorite Death Metal bands. In the meanwhile two years have gone after there previous album "Bleeding The False" has been released. The new record "Rise To Dominate" is directly attracting attention, with a more diabolical influenced cover artwork (but that's not really suprising, if you see a daemon face and a pentagram on it). At the first time, when you're listening to the new album, you should recognize that there are many things better now. First one is the sound production, which is a way more heavy and powerfull, without sounding too raw and muddy. The sound is really great; everything sounds detailed but without developing a sound that is too clean. Also the technical level has been increased again. On "Rise To Dominate" the sound production and the technical level, which have been both improved, the band also did some changes with the songwritting. To anticipate one point, the new album sounds 100% like Aeon, but the band have made some essential diversifying changes, which is noticeable on the blastbeat parts because they're are a way more varied, so there is much more room for mid-tempo elements. But the major part of the music is dominated by amazing blastbeats which are performed by Sanctification/Dark Funeral Drummer Nils Fjellström. The guy behind the drumkit is so brilliant that it is just jaw-dropping. But the other members have no reason to hide away, because all of them are acting on a high technical level. Especially if you notice the guitarsolos, tappings and apregios of the guitarplayers, which you can really good hear on the track "Living Sin". All the strengths of Aeon are united in this song and that's the reason why this song is one of the best tracks on this album. The frequent use of guitar solos is giving this album something which I would call a light melodic character and it really sounds good. But it should be clear that this album is brutal as hell and just a little bit melodic when they play guitar solos. Sole exceotion is the last song "No One Escapes Us" which is the biggest surprise of the album for me. A slow-moving march rhythm, filled with dark sounding keyboards and slaughtering guitarriffs. This song is able to create a spooky atmosphere to me. Maybe this track sounds compared to the other stuff of this record a little bit incongruous, but we all now since the country version of "God Gives Head In Heaven" from their previous album, that Aeon are always good for a surprise. Altogether I enjoyed "Rise To Dominate" way more than the previous album, which is definitely a result of the better sound production and the varied songwritting. But here you can also find some songs which weren't able to convince myself. The best example is the boring and slow moving song "You Pray For Noting ". Only the good guitar solo can prevent the totally demise of the song. Another point which I dislike here are the dumb lyrics. Sometimes they're really ridiculous. They're very Deicide influenced, against all Christianity, but escpacially on the song "House Of Greed" the lyrics really become very silly. Well, yes most of the Death Metal bands have never written any good lyrics (you can't even understand a single word, when they all are using death growls), but most of them here are sounding more like a teenage revolt, than anything else. Ah yes as I have mentioned Deicide above, singer Tommy really reminds me of Glen Benton. Personally I really like that style. Apart from that, Aeon is a way more technical than Deicide. Ok Aeon did a good job on their newest output and it showes the versatility of the band. In my opinion "Rise To Dominate" is the best album in the bands history. Everyone who is into fast, technical brutal Death Metal can buy this CD without thinking twice, because here you get 45 minutes of pure Death Metal without any compromises.

Rating: 84 % | from Gore | Date: 04.11.07 | Time: 21:50	shut down