The Black Dahlia Murder - Miasma

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Genre	Death Metal	Trevor Strnad	Vocals
Tracks	10	Brian Eschbach	Guitar
Runningtime	36 Min.	John Kempainen	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Dave Lock	Bass
Release	22 Aug. 2005	John Kempainen	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

The Black Dahlia Murder established themselves at the forefront of the U.S. metal scene when they released their full-length Metal Blade debut Unhallowed in June 2003. The release of that album was the beginning of a nonstop touring itinerary that kept them on the road for nearly two years playing with bands such as The Red Chord, Arch Enemy, Napalm Death and Terror. The Black Dahlia Murder play technical death/thrash metal with emphasis on the first, and when listening to the album, it is pretty soon obvious what part of the world they come from.

Even though their intentions are good with varied song structures, changes in pace from blast beats to mid tempo thrashy parts, this does not quite reach where it's aiming for. It lacks a bit of personality and the attempts to vary the songs within themselves usually fail, as it gets unstructured due to wanting-too-much-in-too-short-time. Perhaps they have had this in mind when keeping the album lenght at a modest 36 minutes, but still it is a bit too much of it all. It is many times fast and furious and it takes twists and turns and most of the time it makes me restless and confuses me. At the same time, in a weird way, it is too one dimensional and monotone. It may sound like a contradiction, but that is the feeling I get. If you like the sound of that, this might very well be an album for you.

Instrumentally it sounds pretty ok and they know what they are doing, but it feels a bit like they are playing it safe by going for the standard approach and not much feeling are being put into the riffs and arrangements. Vocally it works better, to not say well, with both good growling and nice, sharp, aggressive and more high pitched ones.

Enjoyable in small doses, but it's one band among many. They have to get some personality and get a grip of their musical approach before the grades can be higher than this. They certainly have the potential.