Taketh - Freakshow

*=Staff's pick	Welcome Evil Ignore* Not Quite Right Consequence* Silence* Freakshow Paths And Crossroads Högmod* Your Master Mind Numbing Crap Past The Horizon Bring Me Water A New Day

Genre	Death/Thrash Metal	David Dahl	Vocals
Tracks	14	Mikael Lindquist	Guitar
Runningtime	49 Min.	Atahan	Guitar
Label	Fear Dark	Lars Walfridsson	Bass
Release	09 Sept. 2005	Johan Dahl	Drums
Country	Sweden	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	At The Gates, Diabolical

Can't say that I've heard much from this swedish band before. With the album titled Freakshow, Taketh brings us their debut released on Fear Dark Records, created in the Golden Cut Studio.

Freakshow kicks of quite good I think, catchy mid tempo thrash or perhaps melodic death metal is a better word as the music has more to do with early In Flames than Kreator even though the voice from the bands singer David Dahl is ok and filled with the aggressive touch from german thrash. Musically its very swedish and especially the west coast or the so called 'Gothenburg sound' is obvious I think. Good diversity, the music is always kept within a frame and it feels very solid. What I don't understand is why they don't use more melodic elements as it seems to be what they do best. Verses and refrains in songs like Consequence and Silence hold very high quality and these are songs that are carried out in a very good and professional way.

The strength in Taketh's music lays within their knowledge about harmony and how to write music plain and simple. I point at this fact as Freakshow is the bands debut and it is seldom that upcoming acts feel and sound so mature and ready as Taketh does. The weakness is the overambitious act to put fourteen tracks on the very same record. In order to get away with fifty minutes of metal of this kind, it has to be more varied or of the even more aggressor kind. And as said, this isn't the german way or even Bay Area thrash. It's swedish melodic death thrash. A genre that is so overfilled with half junky bands that it's almost a shame.

But junk or not, Taketh's first born is anything else than junk. With a better production it could be more than ok as it sounds a bit dusty and dry and simply doesn't make the music just. An extra plus for the tasty intro and outro tunes, weird Freakshow.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
6	6	7

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tim