ABSTRACT RAPTURE - Democadencia

11 songs
54:46 minutes
***** ***
Maddening Media

Bandpage

Luxembourgish metal band Abstract Rapture was founded in 2001 and positively surprised in late 2005 with their self-produced debut EP Dead End Entry which proved convincingly that it is still possible to set new accents in nowadays thrash metal. It was therefore only logical that they won last year’s local Metal Battle. In the meantime the band has been signed by Maddening Media who presents now their first full length album with eleven new songs.

The band added a second guitar which hasn’t changed their sound considerably though. They still play a modern kind of thrash metal which can therefore be called neo thrash. Abstract Rapture come immediately to the point with their ultra heavy riffs. The songs more or less all follow the same pattern, but they are still filled to the rim with ideas so that there is no idle time for boredom. They normally start extremely brutal, and especially the vocals draw parallels to Pantera. The choruses on the other hand are generally more melodic and remind sometimes of Metallica. But there are also other influences that you can detect on Democadencia. The ultra-brutal Rejections sounds a little like Unleashed. Carpe Noctem is a little excursion into the metalcore genre, and the bass heavy Poisoned Love puts less emphasis on speed and more on smartly located breakbeats. The songwriting is extremely sophisticated, the guitar work more than impressive, and the production is worlds better than on the debut. Only towards the end, I got the impression with the last two songs that the band was a little out of breath and ideas.

Despite this negligent weakness, Abstract Rapture seem to be on the right track. They have the potential to become big in the current thrash metal scene, and with the right promotion behind them, they could even have a bright future ahead of them. The concept of TV addiction has been represented very interestingly on the cover artwork. The CD itself therefore looks like one of those TV test cards you see when no program is on.