The saga of North American musicians worshiping Swedish melodic death metal continues. Actually, I thought people had gotten over that whole “the only good metal bands are from Europe” idea, but these guys have been around since 2000 and actually had their first release come out in 2005 just when the whole melodic death metal thing was starting to die down.
Like most Americans, CERBERUS likes to try and add a bit more power and heft to what they do, and have added a few thrashy bits without flooding the listener with sugary melodies all the time. They’ve even managed to hide a few breakdowns in the songs by using those slightly heavier thrash riffs over pounding half-time drums.
The band certainly sounds like they’ve had some experience writing songs, and it seems they know what they’re doing when trying to get good recording quality. “Dispute The Truth” actually sounds like something that could’ve been put out by Metal Blade had that label been interested in a few more pure melodic death metal bands from the U.S.
Certainly their riffs contain a bit more catch than CERBERUS ' lower quality U.S. melodic death metal brethren, but the fact remains that so many other bands focused on taking their influence from melodic death metal already beat them to the punch. We already have the greats from Sweden, not to mention many of the big melodic metalcore bands have been busy perfecting their craft long before this style caught on.
I’ve actually heard quite a few U.S. melodic death metal bands that have a great execution in terms of playing ability, production quality and songwiritng skills who are unsinged or on very tiny indie labels. I’m surprised that bigger labels haven’t taken much interest, but it’s a harsh reality that there are so many bands playing something related to melodic death metal that the bar has been set impossibly high. “Dispute The Truth” has a great execution, and is a great representation for the genre, but I think for more people to take notice, a creative left turn should be made.
7/10
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Cerberus at Creator Destructor Records
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