Band:	Death Du Jour
Album:	Fragments Of Perdition
Style:	Brutal death metal, Progressive death metal, Technical death metal
Release date:	September 2004

01. Grace By Chalice Of Anger
02. Fragments Of Perdition
03. Embittering Cicatricies
04. Harlot Deliverance
05. Weakmeat Vortex
06. Satire Of Caustic Lunacy
07. Triangle Gallows
08. Dogma - The Suffering

Death Du Jour is quite a strange band name (it means 'today's death', an analogy to restaurant vocabulary, 'plat du jour' in French meaning 'today's special' or 'dish of the day'. What an interesting fact?). The strangeness of the name is in accordance with the strangeness of the music. These young Finnish guys play progressive and technical brutal death, a genre that's not really usual. That's their main quality but also their main flaw.

I explain: Death Du Jour's music is complex, with a high level of technique. I congratulate the musicianship of the band members, they all sound very talented. If technical death and progressive metal must have something in common, it is the songwriting abilities of the bands. Here, as I previously said, the music is complex, full of rhythm changes (although the pace is mainly fast), and it's alternating between sheer brutality and some rare moments of melody.

All that sounds very good, but actually there is a problem, a problem that's encountered by a lot of young bands that choose an unusual path: Death Du Jour lead their search for originality too far. The songs' structures are broken, torn apart and twisted in everything direction, with the consequence of rendering the album extremely messy. The problem is that you can't really make a difference between one song and another: the vocals are still typical growlings with no variation, and there is not the slightest tune or riff or vocal line or anything that I could pick out, that could catch my attention and make me want to listen to Fragments Of Perdition again. As I write, I realize I am not able to quote a single song, because none of them is above the rest.

So ok that's brutal, that's technical, there is obviously great musicianship, and a certain talent in the search of originality, but next time they'll have to remain reasonable in their experimentations, and keep a direction in mind. Death Du Jour reminds me of a young animal that's unable to concentrate on a particular fact for more than three seconds and lets his mind wander around, touching lightly a lot of ideas without really digging any one of them. That's what Death Du Jour is: a little animal that needs to learn from mistakes, to gain experience, and only then will it be able to live its life freely, without nasty reviewers clawing at its feet. I'd like to listen to them again in a few years from here, because their case is not desperate (it's only the first album, they'll get better). But for now, 'Finland's latest extreme metal prodigy' is only another disappointment.