Band:	Eternal Silence
Album:	The Arsonist
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	March 26, 2010
A review by:	BitterCOld

01. What Have I Become
02. The Art Of Deception
03. Centuries Of Blood
04. The Arsonist
05. Casualties Of War
06. The Epitome Of Hate

From the land of brats and cheeseheads come Eternal Silence, an unsigned death metal outfit, and the six tracks that make up Arsonist mark the band's third release, following a couple demos cut back in 1998 and 2002.

For starters, the tracks are well arranged and everything sounds nice and good... the guitars show off some great riffs, but don't crowd the spectrum enough to bury the bass... allowing it to rumble along and even show off a couple flourishes during some fills. The drums thump and the vocals sound remind me of Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg. The tracks thunder along primarily at a nice mid-pace, with some rapid fire blast beat sections here, slowed down crunches there, and the occasional clean intro.

Lyrically the band touches on warfare, the evils of propaganda cutting into civil liberties, the evils of religion, and, of course, as the title of the album would suggest, arson.

Everything sounds good, is well put together, and is well executed.

The biggest drawbacks are two things. First and foremost, the band, while competent at playing their instruments and writing some fun riffs and good songs, aren't treading any new ground musically. It's been done.

The other stems from the sound quality. Perhaps it's me just showing my age or roots, but while that whole Morrisound thing was widely just considered "mud", I find myself missing it the more modern death metal I listen to. As I said before, it sounds good and everything has it's place within the mix, and is quite crushing in it's totality... I guess it's just that I prefer a little more filth on my death, rather than sinister and clinical. But hey, a surgeon's scalpel is every bit as lethal an instrument as a blood-caked claw hammer, it's all a matter of user preference.

All in all they do a good enough job of merging some old school death metal acts with some melodic tinges and modernized production, and if that is your thing (and I know a lot of you here dig modern day death metal), they are definitely worth checking out. And, conveniently, they are also easy enough to check it... just a mouse click away.