(We present DGR‘s review of the debut album from the Belgian death-dealers Coffin Feeder.)

We’ve joked about it over the years but there does exist something in the vocalist world that we’ve referred to as the “Sven effect”, wherein any band that has a feature from vocalist Sven de Caluwé is going to inevitably sound like one of his projects. Him being one of the more consistent and prolific guest vocalists out there certainly doesn’t help matters either; the guy is just so recognizable that he could almost never commit a crime because someone would be able to pick him out of a lineup while in another country.

The recipe is simple too: if you take Sven and put him over some sort of grinding death metal or deathcore riff, inevitably it is going to sound like it has emerged from his wide-reaching works within the infrastructure of his biggest project, Aborted.

You have to work very, very hard in order to avoid this, though a handful of bands have managed to do so over the years. Most recently and impressively, the progressive death metal group Eternal Storm featured him on their song “A Dim Illusion” and it actually played out more like the band bent him to their will rather than the other way around.

But does this same effect exist when it comes to Sven‘s own projects and the works he has brought into his orbit over the years? Is one person’s taste for rapid-fire blast and grinding guitar enough that all of them become one amorphous mass or is there enough on offer that part of the interest will come from hearing how a particular sculpture might’ve been crafted in spite of one guy’s spotlight being so suffocatingly bright that even when it’s not his choice, any similarities to his career are going to fall into his lap?

It has to be vexing at times, but by that same token perhaps it is worth it to just throw caution to the wind. Continue reading »