Dead At The Scene - Sharktopus
This is an impressive offering from Edinburgh's Dead At The Scene, a self-proclaimed melodic metal band who manage to cram more musical ideas into one song than many bands manage per album.
Opening track 'DAAE' kicks things off in a suitably pugnacious manner, full of jagged, stop-start riffing and schizophrenic arrangements and 'Echoes' follows in a similar vein whilst 'Fireworks' is a melodic instrumental, which, whilst somewhat of a departure, is no less inspired.
The final two tracks, 'Turns Out He's Luke's Father' and 'Paint The Sky' are more examples of Dead At The Scene's marriage of technical proficiency and sheer brute force. The former comes out with both guns (or lightsabers?!) blazing and, as with most of their material, incorporates nimble-fingered flashes of melody to offset the crushing heaviness, whilst the latter has more than enough rhythmic variety, but isn't quite as well crafted as the preceding tracks.
It will be a shame if Dead At The scene are self-releasing music for much longer and not snapped up by record label, though, considering the quality on display here they seem to be doing perfectly without one.