SAREA: "Alive"

Rating: 5/10

Label: Supernova 2011

Review by Urban "Wally" Wallstrom

Sarea, the outcome of this platter is easily influenced by acts such as In Flames and Children Of Bodom, and just a hint of Soilwork. The Swedish band remain firmly within a melodic metalcore, death metal structure, you know, clean vocals and standard arrangements, but also have a lot of aggressive tendencies and desperate cries within these eleven tracks of metal. It's nicely played melodic death and vocalist Christoffer Forsberg is more than capable of switching from sinister to evil on several occasions (especially on "Nemesis", "Boderline" and Blind"), but unfortunately lacks any real spark. "Kings Of Lies" features some atmospheric work by mentioned Forsberg, but the backing fails to match the intensity that this particular song require. They do have a bit of a technical edge and "Alive" do feature the few odd riffs and curve balls every once in a while. They obviously know how to pen a couple of decent tracks or three, I guess they simply just need to work through some material to finally hit a homerun.

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