(In February Noble Demon released a new album by the Finnish melodic death metal hellions Voidfallen. DGR held fire and allowed the album to boil through his sensorium for a while, as he often does, and he’s now ready to give us his thoughts about it.)

Like many a melodeath band in this day and age, Finland’s Voidfallen are an interesting proposition. This is a genre well-known and well-trodden with an immense body of work to its name and just as many contortions and permutations as someone could even imagine – and then some. There’s been an insane number of groups looking to put their own spin on the catchier and more glamorous side of death metal, taking its penchant for hook-heavy riff work and shred-tastic guitar soloing and continually stacking new blocks atop it or bending it to their will.

When you have regional flavorings adding to the massive subgenrification of a style, you know you’re dealing with an unruly beast, one which at this point is beyond just the territory of a devil we know and well within the realms of a devil we may have been intimate with once or twice, assuming that quiet nod and knowing wink isn’t just suggesting future adventures post-expected drunken blackout.

Noble Demon then have an intriguing idea put forth with Voidfallen‘s second album The Rituals Of Resilience. Beyond the masks and spectacle, Voidfallen are a combination of classic keyboard and guitar warrior melodeath, slamming face-first into an insane tango with the darker side of Omnium Gatherum‘s slightly more progressive flavorings. The Rituals Of Resilience has Voidfallen smashing up against the plexiglass of their chosen genre in a classic act of attempting to do what could best be defined as ‘a hell of a lot’ while still hewing hard into their foundational drawings. Continue reading »