Band:	Noumena
Album:	Absence
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	April 2005

01. The End Of The Century
02. Everlasting Ward
03. The First Drop
04. Slain Memories
05. A Day To Depart
06. Prey Of The Tempter
07. Here We Lie
08. All Veiled
09. The Dream And The Escape
10. The Great Anonymous Doom

The game is over, Gothenburg?

While the whole Melodic/Gothenburg Death Metal craze seems to be wearing off, there are some bands attempting to achieve success playing such genre. I won't deny it, is great genre with many good assets, and many hindrances also, like the repetitiveness, lack of innovation, false creativity and many more, and what else you could expect from a genre that spawns hundreds of bands each year?

Nowadays I don't think there's a band that's going to reinvent Melodeath. It's a genre that reached its peak with some influential and landmark albums that I won't be mentioning here to avoid debates. Nowadays we have the leftovers of a genre that already gave the best of itself, one of the results of the cathartic act is Noumena.

Firmly rooted on the Melodic Death scene Noumena tries to make it with its sophomore work so far, entitled "Absence". You know the formula, melodic leads, fast paced songs, growls, the occasional male clean vocals and the stellar apparition of the female vocals, at this point, nothing surprises me.

The album starts with "The End Of The Century" a song that has excellent guitar work, and nice melodies, but doesn't stick in your mind. "Everlasting Ward" takes a different route for once and explores more "Folky" passages, nice song! Reminded me of Amorphis -Elegy era- at times. "Slain Memories" features a duet between female vocals and growls, not a novelty no more, but is nice to hear it once in a while. In "Prey Of The Tempter" we witness another battle of vocals, between growls and clean male vocals this time.

Production is top-notch as I might expected from any product coming from Spinefarm/Spikefarm Records, although I found the vocals too buried in the mix, maybe a little more of presence could do wonders for the band.

In a nutshell, this is truly a worthy effort from a band that doesn't try to reinvent Melodic Death Metal, they just want to do it right. And they achieve success in such endeavour, sadly, they don't score that much in originality.