THE SCATTERING OF ASHES

The Scattering of Ashes is the fourth full-length studio album by Canadian progressive extreme metal act Into Eternity. None of the preceeding albums have impressed me much and I´m beginning to think that Into Eternity will have to make a utopian perfect album to convince me. Yet again my curiosity got the better of me and I´ve had this album on loan for the last couple of months.

The music on the album is a kind of modern melodic death metal with progressive metal elements.The vocal style on the album is not far from the vocal style on the last couple of albums by 3 Inches of Blood. One snarling vocal type, one Rob Halford ( Judas Priest) high pitched vocal type and some melodic clean singing ( well the latter can´t really be compared to 3 Inches of Blood). The clean sung vocal lines are really melodic, but like on all earlier releases by Into Eternity, the vocal lines are not very memorable and after a couple of songs it all kinda sounds the same to me. It´s the same with the music. It´s very melodic and quite powerful most of the time, but after a couple of tracks the songs become forgettable and sounds too much the same. This music seriously lack hooks. While the music is very well executed, the production is top notch and the music as such is pretty well written to, I just can´t get excited about The Scattering of Ashes. And while I probably should give the album 3 stars because of the above mentioned qualities I can´t give something like this more than a 2.5 star rating. Fans of melodic death metal with progressive sensibilities might enjoy this more than I do.