Week 37: Carcass - Death Certificate

The artist: Carcass are a death metal/grindcore band from Liverpool, the English city that's most well known for The Beatles. Carcass have been praised for being highly influential in grindcore as well as melodic death metal. They implemented melodic death metal to their music with Heartwork around the same time metal bands from Gothenburg such as In Flames and At the Gates were only starting to record albums. Besides The Beatles, this is one band that makes me happy to live very close to Liverpool.

The album: Heartwork is the album where Carass played death metal in a more melodic style. Although some melodic death metal bands may not sound like standard death metal, Heartwork is one where you can relate to the more traditional death metal with killer tracks such as Carnal Forge, Blind Bleeding the Blind and today's metal song Death Certificate. Heartwork is a melodic death metal album that nicely stands out from the subgenre.

The song: Death Certificate starts with some twin guitars where one has a simple two note riff while the other is a melodic tune that eventually clash each other some fast riffing. Now this is a riff that slays and shows some brutality. The lyrical lines are rather minimal and may not have much to them but it's a good sign since Carcass were more focused on writing some shining guitar work. The song enters a melodic solo phase where both Bill Steer and Michael Amott both play side by side. These are solos that stick out from the album so well along with the crazy solo on Carnal Forge. Overall, Death Certificate is song that will offer many death certificates around due to it being such a killer track with riffs and solos.

Week 34: In Flames - Dreamscape

The artist: In Flames are one of the key melodic death metal bands (or rather used to be) who have received mainstream success over the last decade. Whether it turned for the better or worse is up to you. Personally they were better when they were playing melodic death metal and not going mainstream and that's something many metal fans will agree with whether they like them or not. The first few albums can at least be seen as decent releases, although your mileage may vary for the debut album Lunar Strain. Infact, that term applies to In Flames as a whole since some of the later works have been fairly praised.

The album: Lunar Strain is In Flames' debut album. This was a time in In Flames before Anders Fridén was even in the band and now he's the longest running member in the band. Lunar Strain was very underdeveloped for In Flames but the album opener Behind Space has become a popular song for them. This album had folk music elements to it which can easily be seen with the instrumental Hårgalåten and the second part of Everlost. The folk elements were hit and miss for In Flames but they got better with it on the following album The Jester Race. The only other major flaw with this album is how short Starforsaken feels. After the solo ends, it feels there was meant to be more for the song than we've heard. Even with these flaws, it's still an album to pick up if you really enjoy the older In Flames or even appreciate their music both old and new.

The song: Dreamscape is one of the two instrumental tracks on Lunar Strain. The instrumental remains consistent with its melodic riffs that make it sound like In Flames' counterpart to Iron Maiden's Transylvania. The sound production is nicely mixed for this track since the bass is easy to hear and for their debut album that had some rough edges, it's a godsend the production value is in good shape. With a short length of 3:45, Dreamscape has the right length of time and gives those beautiful riffs enough time to get stuck in your head.