Susperia - Vindication

*=Staff's pick	Cage of Remembrance* The Bitter Man Anguished Scream (For Vengeance)* Petrified* The Bounty Hunter* Completion Warmaster* Dead Man's World Cast Life Into Fire* Bleed Yourself

Genre	Power/Death Metal	Athera	Vocals
Tracks	10	Cyrus	Guitar
Runningtime	47 Min.	Elvorn	Guitar
Label	Nuclear Blast	Memnock	Bass
Release	06 May 2002	Tjodalv	Drums
Country	Norway	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

Susperia was "born" and founded in late 1998 by above all former Dimmu Borgir drummer Tjodalv and recorded their first demo, Illusions of Evil, one year later. Their debut album, Predominance, which was released 2001, sold pretty well and the band made a name for themselves in above all Germany and England. They got some praising reviews for their extreme type of metal and the anticipation for the continuing story was quite high.

Superias' sound is kind 'a hard to categorise though since it's not power, black or death but more pure energetic and aggressive metal and this make them very hard to compare with other bands as well. You could say that it's more death than power but it's still not quite crossing the line between the two. The aggressiveness is mostly due to the vocals and the energy is mostly coming from the guitars although some tracks contain some more death-influenced ones too.

There's also a perfect balance between the vocals and the actually awesome guitars. The two elements co-operate great together and although you hear the instruments clearly it's not of the expanse of the singin'. No one gets the upper-hand, which some bands with this type of vocals tend to get.

We're not talkin' any too technical or too complicated guitars either but a straight-forward sound with very good passages, intros and solos. The vocals are a bit too aggressive at times for my taste but on the other hand I like the guitars so much and the tracks are based around those and they are the absolute high-light with this release according to me. I wish I could grade Vindication based only on Cyrus' and Elvorn's string-bending but unfortunately that's not possible. Regarding this factor plus a very good production I must say that Susperia was a very pleasant surprise and I hope more of you dear readers will come this conclusion too.

So if you're looking for an alternative metal-style that's kind of a hybrid between power and death Susperia might be the answer. For myself I can just say that I think Vindication is very good indeed and especially the guitars make this album worth some more attention than just taking up some rack-space at your local CD-retailer. The least Susperia is worth is a check-up 'cause it's a bit too good to be totally unnoticed.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
8	6,5	7

Summary
7 chalices of 10 - Mat