Customer Reviews

Infamy & the Breed

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is without a doubt on the heavier side of melodic death-metal, but that is not at all a bad thing. Only two songs contain any clean vocals and the ones on track 8 (Attending Annihilation)are done by the always impressive Christian Alverstram (ex-Scar Symmetry).

Personally, the cd was almost worth it just because of that song, but there are several others that are great.

The only reason I cannot give this cd 5 stars is because in a couple songs the vocalist does this awkward talking in place of singing or screaming.

Good death metal album, a touch of behemoth to them, but they are pretty young yet.....a lot of potential and lets hope this band doesnt try to get to big to quick and put out poor material that suits the main streamers

I'm on my... 10th or so listen, trying very hard to find something that innovates or simply blows me completely away.

That task is really difficult...

There's hints of greatness, on "The Last Endeavour" the small hints of middle-eastern two-step in the beginning start to elevate the groove to something monstrous, but is lost soon thereafter by transition to a blastbeat.

The keyboards hold an epic feel... but only supply a chord bed and no novel application has been applied to them on any song.

The weakest link in the entire disk though is on the vocals. A practitioner of the art myself, nothing annoys me more than a one-trick vocalist. Simon Bergland delivers the equivalent sound of dragging stones on stones while tossing in a bit of a banshee shriek at the same time. The result is something that sounds overproduced, overdubbed, and completely lacking in dynamic. He only ever does one vocal style, and only has one volume level.

The guitarwork (especially harmonies and leads) are well executed, but when comparing to some of the A+ works in the metal genre... its quite difficult to justify the word "Brilliant." Something I would apply to quite a few of the bands that CM has been signing the past few years.

Stand out tracks: "Descend into Chaos," and "The Black Omen" conjures everything I loved from Clayman-Era In Flames.

Who would most like this band? If you like death metal without too much keyboard work, Sweden's "Sadistic Grimness" is about all that comes to mind. Otherwise probably "Heaven Shall Burn," but HSB puts quite a bit more variety on vox compared to Zonaria. (And that's my greatest criticism of that band, too.)

In conclusion, this band shows alot of potential, guitarwork is good, hinting that great things are just over the horizon. The sound is good but heavily overproduced, and the vocals are mediocre at best, picking one monotonous style and bringing the entire ship down.

Since I hadn't heard much about Zonaria before I bought this album, I didn't really have much to go on except a good feeling about a band that came out of nowhere to be signed by Century Media - this album then being re-released by the giant metal label. That being said, I was utterly unprepared and completely blown away when I listened to it. Infamy and the Breed is melodic and even catchy without losing any power or brutality. While this isn't particularly new, with similar bands like Vensania and Agathodaimon having been around longer than Zonaria, I have yet to hear a more masterful execution of this style than Infamy and the Breed (which would include Zonaria's new album The Cancer Empire). On this album, Zonaria seamlessly mix Black Metal and Melodic Death Metal, and for the most part, without steering too much in favor of one style or the other. When they occationally indulge in one approach over the other, the listener is the better for it, and this ends up making the album more interesting. The Black Omen is an excellent example of a more melodic emphasis, though The Armageddon Anthem and Everything Is Wasteland tend to favor brutality over melody. It is also worth mentioning that The Last Endeavor is maybe one of my favorite metal songs ever written. If the riff from the middle section doesn't get stuck in your head for weeks on end, then there's something wrong with you.

This is a five star metal album if I've ever heard one. I've been listening to this album for the better part of two months, and for someone who likes variety as much as I do, that says a lot.