EMBERS – The Gods Are Traitors

Embers is a Hungarian surprise that according to the band’s bio-sheet has already gone through several lineup and sound changes. The band has been maturing from the very beginning through self-exploration until the album in question, under the catchy and evil-ish title The Gods Are Traitors arrived.

The dark cover artwork can be characterized as misleading; the album ‘looks like’ a pure Death Metal release with several Gore finishing touches. Well, these assumptions give their place to the true musical direction as soon as the homonym track kicks in. The impressive shredding guitar duo raises the expectation for what is about to follow. The music is melodic and aggressive flirting a little bit with the progressive side of the legendary Death. Actually, this flirt kind of stays superficial since the monotonous vocals reveal the underlying strong Hard Core foundations. Nowadays, this is often called Metalcore but fortunately Embers stay in a safe distant from this musical trend. This is mainly due to the guitars that lay down some sophisticated riffs and harmonies that is a rare element in pure Metalcore bands. Songs like “The Mission Is Murder” and “Choose Your Enemy!” are filled with impressive ideas in the catchy guitar hooks and the headbanging double drum pedaling breaks.

The energy literally flows through the speakers during the solid and heavy as hell “The Shine Of Hate” where some Slayer influences surface up to make the result even more enticing. The album needs additional spins for the listener to sink his teeth in and thus discover something new each time. The monotonous vocals profile is the album’s Achille’s heel sounding most of the time out of place even though they perfectly play the in-your-face and full of anger role. An exception to this monotonous vocal pattern is the track “Within My Soul”; here Embers try to experiment a little with some clean and melodic lines that sound like a good idea that also needs additional work.

After all it is a matter of taste and in the long run the quality of the compositions supersedes this flaw. For the better understanding of Embers’ sound ancestry… influences from the early Dark Tranquility or In Flames can also be heard when it comes to the melodic and distinct riffs and the groovy song structure.

The production fully supports the sound of the album balancing a raw power against the complexity of the guitars and adds ‘depth’ to the headbanging heaviness of the The Gods Are Traitors.

The quality of the album reveals the band’s high composing potentials and raises the expectations for their future development. Hopefully, the Thrash-meets-Death Metal profile will prevail leading the Metalcore side to atrophy and (why not?) introduce a new singing direction for the band.