Maximum Metal Rating Legend

Synder means "sin" in Swedish. The brain child of Ola Englund (The Haunted), Feared deliver a solid slab of aggressive, melodic death metal with their fifth album. Chock full of mouth-watering riffs, Englund shows off his Haunted chops by delivering some truly catchy and crushing riffs throughout. Vocalist Mario Ramos' guttural vocals and high pitched screams accentuate a very aggressive musical tone throughout the album. Songs like "Your Demise", "Of Iron and Ashes" and "Wolf at the End of the World" are the type of song death metal fans would cut through their own legs for. Unrelenting, bombastic and ferocious, those songs are an unending aural assault of whiplash inducing, headbanging tracks. The surprise track on the album for me is "My Own Redemption" which starts out with an incredibly catchy intro riff that becomes the foundation of the song. But at about a minute and fifty-five seconds in, Ramos comes in with these clean, crisp vocals that just set you back on your heels a little bit. The clean shift in vocals is an incredibly well-used switch and delivers the system shock that allows you to reset for the remainder of the album and prepare for the oncoming heaviness. Production on the album is on par with most death metal albums, focusing mainly on the vocals and guitar while the bass and drums kind of blend together into this weird amalgamated rhythmic mass. All in all, this is a solid album and Englund is a veritable riffmaster with his guitar work on "Synder". Will this album push the envelope as far as the death metal genre is concerned? No. Is this album a new sound for death metal? Definitely not. Does this album stand out from most of the death metal out in the metal world now? Not entirely. But what it does offer is some of the most accessible and listenable death metal out there on the market that doesn't overuse blast beats, unintelligible vocals or super sonic, technical guitar that has been done and redone time and time again. Feared is a band for fans of good, straight-up death metal that pulls no punches and doesn't try to do anything other than deliver songs that will have you banging your head time and time again.