Solid but underwhelming melodic death metal.
Hailing from Holland, the oddly named Fuelblooded have been around since the tail end of the 1980s (albeit under a different moniker: Sacramental Sachem), yet are only now releasing their debut album. For a band who have managed to get support slots with melodic death metal luminaries such as Arch Enemy, with little more than demos to their name, eventually getting around to a proper album can only mean greater heights.
Fuelblood's music is intensely guitar driven. Everything in their songs seems to be built around the nucleus of a twin-axe assault, and the frequent, impressive solos show that Michiel Rutten and Danny Tunker deserve their role centre stage. This occasionally turns into self-indulgent orgies of fretboard twiddling - a death metal Dragonforce, if you will. The guitars captivate your ears, they are the most distinctive feature of the music, yet at times they are rather jarring, derailing the music, instead of helping to drive it towards it's conclusion.
There are occasional touches of originality on 'Inflict the Inevitable', such as the slow and sinister intro of 'Constructive Destruction' (accompanied by thunderous drum rolls), and the doom metal influenced title track. his forms a rather nice interlude in amongst the speedily slick melodies of the rest of the album, and sets things up a treat for 'Hate of a Thousand Ages', and 'The Hangman's Burden', a headbanging anthem that is quite probably the album's best track. But largely things are an enjoyable if unambitious mixture of death, thrash, and straight up heavy metal. Imagine if Iron Maiden and Arch Enemy teamed up to record a lackluster Metallica tribute album (with My Dying Bride guesting occasionally), and that's pretty much this album.
I really should hate this album - it's uninventive, and has more twiddly guitar parts than you can shake a whammy bar at. But despite this, it's strangely endearing. It's well written and an enjoyable 40 odd minutes (though it seems much shorter...) that takes a swoop upwards in quality for it's second part. Maybe it's the pleasing conclusion that left me with a smile on my face: after 20 minutes of rather nice melodeath, the underwhelming metal-by-numbers of the first four tracks becomes only a distant memory, and the listener is left with a feeling of contentment and vague satisfaction; all is well in the world, or at least that small part of it occupied by melodeath/thrash.