Truth be told I’ve always had a soft spot for melodic death metal. That’s not a statement I’m liable to include on my CV in the near future but as I have decided to review a release from said genre this week I feel I should mention it. There are two reasons for this, one is that I owe much of my awakening into the heavier and more underground spectrum of music to bands from the genre such as Arch Enemy and In Flames, which my enjoyment of opened my mind to the acceptance of heavier metal. The second reason is that while I can occasionally enjoy the chaotic virtuosity of true death metal, most of the time I prefer something a bit more straightforward and less taxing, and this genre tends to fit the bill.

The genre at its best is characterized by it’s melodic and often complex guitar work. It is this sense of melody to the riffs and song structures that lends it its name. However the genre also seems to come with a curse, as it seems once a band reaches the zenith of its powers it seems to throw it all away in spectacular style by the inert dumbing down of its sound. Both aforementioned names in addition to a few other notable bands have all strayed down this path. There are a few exceptions, Dark Tranquillity being one of them and a few instances of bands attempting to turn it around as shown by Come Clarity, but for the most part, to catch a band at its best you’re better off looking to near the beginning of its career.

Enter stage left the headache monikered myGrain who have just unleashed their debut album Orbit Dance. The 6 piece Finnish band was formed in 2004 comprising half the line up of a group called New Science Band. (No, I’ve never heard of them either) The band employs dual guitars and in true Finnish style, a keyboardist in addition to the norm.

myGrain’s sound is at first a little difficult to pin down. They employ a mixture of vaguely thrashy riffs, death metal and clean vocals and a healthy dose of fast paced drumming. All this is interspersed with the odd keyboard or sample inflection. The end result is a band which sounds at times unique and interesting while at other times comes across as a lacklustre combination of Children of Bodom and Soilwork. This hit and miss nature of the music peppers much of the album resulting in a contribution to the musical landscape that veers wildly between seminal and pedestrian.

Fortunately the good slightly outweighs the bad. Album opener Plastic is a fine example of the band doing things right, building on a blistering main riff, keyboards which actually add to the feel of the song and a soaring chorus. Other high points include Humanimal, which combines an apocalyptic tinged ‘chanting’ sample and some exemplary drumming with one of the best vocal performances on the album and Downfall, which again succeeds on the strength of its riffing and keyboards.

The bad side of the album tends to rear its head in two ways. One is via the use of some truly uninspired song constructions and riffs, which make the band sound like they’re simply going through the motions. A couple of examples of this are Pitch Black and Cold Reflection which seem to pass by without leaving any lasting impression, aside from the overwhelming feeling that you’ve heard this somewhere before. The other downside to the bands sound is that the clean aspect of the vocals can be inconsistent, sounding fantastic at times yet out of place at others. I think this has more to do with the placement of them in songs than the ability of the vocalist so it is something that is easily solved if the band learns to utilise them with more precision.

This is a promising debut. It is not going to launch the members of myGrain into superstardom nor is it going to shake up the foundations of the genre. It is however going to be a positive launching pad from which the band can examine what worked and what didn’t and nurture their sound from there. If they can isolate the aspects of their sound which at times give them a unique feel they may be able to lift themselves out of the mire of a very crowded genre. If however they come out with more of the same next time, without the general teething problems of a first album weighing them down, they may be lost to one of the greatest of musical evils, mediocrity.

MP3: Various samples and full demo versions of songs on the album