MELEEH - Heartland |
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It is unusual to come across a Swedish band that does not play melodic death metal. Meleeh started in 2004, and after a debut album (Another Low, A New Hollow) one year later, Heartland is the second CD by this excellent chaos band from Scandinavia. The five-piece plays a mixture of hardcore and screamo. Even if this combination doe doesn’t sound too exciting at first, the way Meleeh are practicing it lifts them far above the average. The vocals are never clean and are far more aggressive than the music which contains heavy, noisy and emotional moments. The songs are quite diverse and allow for many different feelings like wrath, chaos, despair and madness. Sometimes the band surprises with really complex structures as you can discover on Malign and Vittra. It’s no surprise that a song called The Doom is less fast than the rest of the album. It’s here where Meleeh let you hear their more emotional and psychotic faces which suit them well too. The instrumental Love Is Dead reminds me vaguely of Godspeed You Black Emperor. The album isn’t very long, but I prefer eight first class emo tracks played in a tight half hour to an album running for forty-five or fifty minutes with some filler material. Meleeh have done a real creative effort, and Heartland always feels very honest as the band is never following any current trends. If you really need a comparison, I can suggest the early days of Refused. But Refused are fucking dead and maybe Meleeh will have a similar bright career. |