If you thought that the corpse of melodic with growled vocals style Gothenburg metal was already ransacked for good, you're wrong. This time around it comes from Italy, as Ragestorm release their third demo, 'The Passion'.

The band's deathcore sounds, mildly put, typical. Riffs that derivate from death/thrash, melodic lead guitar work, various type of growled vocals (from low grunt to froggy wheeze) accompanied by clean singing, faster parts are interrupted by slower breaks... It's like an amalgamation of At The Gates, The Black Dahlia Murder and Trivium. The riffs are mostly memorable, and drumming is driving enough. The band have managed to deliver it with energy. But... The demo level production eats the edges off of it. The vocals suffer the most, as the clean singing is very, very amateurish, if not as whiney as one would expect (that's what they previously had). In the whole it's on the basic, not on the technical, side music-wise. Song writing is quite weak.

Ragestorm are too faceless. If they want to stand out from the mass of deathcore bands, they definitely need some kind of a trait or two. A minor trait they now have are the unusual lyrics, but that is not enough. Keeping that in mind, I enjoy some parts here and there, and it is still far from total crash landing. Ragestorm's music might be well contemporary, but this whole deathcore thingy has gotten old very fast indeed. It's starting to smell rotten, so new flesh is needed around the bones.

Reviewed by Lane
10/05/2009 21:07