Viatrophy

Album Review

When metal historians look back on the 2000s, they will no doubt remember a decade in which Europe dominated death metal, black metal, folk metal, and gothic metal while the United States and Canada dominated metalcore and hardcore-minded metal. But that doesn't mean that metal bands that emerged in the 2000s are obligated to get all inspiration from one continent or the other. Britain's Viatrophy, for example, look to both Europe and North America for inspiration on this self-titled release. Viatrophy's sound is mildly technical death metal with an obvious metalcore/hardcore influence. Scandinavian death metal (as opposed to the early American death metal that was recorded before the Nordic countries came to dominate death metal) is a major influence on this 2009 release, but so are metalcore and hardcore. Throughout the 42-minute CD, two extreme vocal styles are prominent: death metal's Cookie Monster growl and metalcore/hardcore's tortured screaming — and there are no clean vocals, only extreme vocals. Viatrophy have their atmospheric, nuanced moments, but they are the exception rather than the rule; most of the time, this 42-minute CD is about brute force and sensory assault rather than melody and musicality. Of course, Viatrophy are hardly the only folks mining these deathcore waters; there are plenty of other bands in the U.K. and elsewhere who are combining elements of Nordic-style death metal and American-style metalcore/hardcore in this fashion. So Viatrophy's self-titled album falls short of distinctive and is far from groundbreaking. But it's a generally decent, if slightly inconsistent, listen nonetheless — at least if one has a taste for extreme metal.