Chaos Breed – Brutal
It seems like one of the many current trends in metal is the “supergroup” phenomenon, where several guys from established bands get together to “have some fun”, “go back to their roots” and crank out some “old-school” death metal (or black metal, or thrash metal, or whatever). Real death metal isn’t something that just anybody can decide to play on a nostalgic whim, and I’m not convinced these 5 Finns realize this. One look at the main bands of Chaosbreed’s members is all you need to know: Gandalf, Mannhai, Moonsorrow, Amorphis, and The Black League are not exactly names I associate with greatness, except perhaps early Amorphis. Taneli Jarva was also in Sentenced of course, which should definitely be mentioned if their label has any hopes of attracting older fans to this CD. And it seems strange that this band would choose to play Swedish sounding death metal which always overshadowed the smaller (but equally devastating) Finnish scene of the early ’90s–Finland may not have had Entombed, Grave, or Grotesque, but they did have Demigod, Disgrace and Funebre, each great in their own way. Anyway, back to the music of Chaosbreed–it’s all pretty standard stuff “influenced” by the great releases of the early ’90s and repeated plays will probably yield plagiarisms galore if you bother to listen long enough (for example, the main riff in ‘Rotting Alive’ is a total rip-off of Unleashed’s ‘Onward Into Countless Battles’). This CD would be mildly acceptable if it was recorded by a bunch of kids who “discovered” death metal last year, but coming from these guys (at least some of whom were around “back in the day”) it’s hardly impressive. – Brian Woodworth
OLYMPIC / CENTURY MEDIA
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