Fission - Crater

*=Staff's pick	Mechanism Crater* Accelerator* Empty Nimbus* Magnetism Catastrophe Consumer The Core-118 Protons Of Insanity Mind Vortex The Chaos Algorithm Eremiten* Syndrome*

Genre	Death/Thrash Metal	Andreas Hedlund	Vocals
Tracks	11	Benny Hägglund	Guitar
Runningtime	43 Min.	-	Guitar
Label	Napalm Records	Benny Hägglund	Bass
Release	23 Aug. 2004	Benny Hägglund	Drums
Country	Sweden	Andreas Hedlund	Keyboards
Similar artists	Borknagar, Dark Tranquillity, Arch Enemy

Fission is a two man project that is created by Benny Hägglund. Benny also is a live drummer for Vintersorg and to complete the line-up in Fission he has brought along Andreas "Vintersorg" Hedlund from mentioned band. And as Vintersorg is also involved contributing with lyrics, vocals and keys - that is really all you need. Two guys doing kick ass metal.

To describe Fission in the easiest way you simply take one part of death metal and mix it up with a bit of thrash, then just throw in a scoop of melancholy and a pinch of black metal and you got Fission. And when melodies are something that Fission favours it all comes down in the end to sound so certain and natural and nothing less then simply great heavy metal music. This is the kind of album that grows on you, it is hard to pick out one tune in favour of the other but it got that certain something, it is a perfect album without any obvious weaknesses.

With the most aggressive and fast parts it reminds very much of Borknagar and it is perhaps because it is Vintersorg that is singing that does that trick. Just as in Borknagar he is combining growls with emotional clean vocals, and it might be only my imagination but it sounds like he actually is singing even better here on this album than what he does in Borknagar. And just like in Borknagar you find pieces with furious speed and aggression combined with melody-lines that gives the music that extra dimension. A wonderful keyboard-line that floats on top of the aggressive music making it a bit more than simply grinding. The mixture with death sometimes comes close to black metal to then take a sudden stop where the music goes into a much slower and melancholic state of mind where the music is carried forward by a melody-line and with clean singing from Vintersorg.

The track Eremiten with lyrics in Swedish does the trick and puts the final grand touch to this album. A kind of deathlike power-ballad if you will, a slower track with a great power and drive and with clean emotional vocals mixed with growls. There is a feeling of melancholy embracing the song with the clean vocals and with the great guitar-line during the segments of growls.

Fission also has that sounding of Swedish death metal with the likes of the older stuff from Dark Tranquillity and Arch Enemy while with the melodic clean vocal parts the later sound of In Flames becomes a better comparison. With the last track Syndrome it is perhaps best demonstrated when you get a little of both Dark Tranquillity and In Flames. The verses is sounding like good old Dark Tranquillity when it is bashing out aggression while the refrains takes a melodic twist with clean vocals closing in on the later sound of In Flames.

The greatest strenght with Fission is that there are no weaknesses - even though none of the tracks really sticks out that much, none of them falls out of frame.

See also review of: The Astral Factor , Epic

Production	Vocals	Compositions
7	8	8

Summary
8 chalices of 10 - Thomas