Band:	Bereavement
Album:	The Advent Of Loss
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	July 07, 2007
A review by:	Baz Anderson

01. Exordium
02. Axis
03. Ascension
04. Eye Of The Storm
05. Loss
06. Conviction
07. Wellspring
08. Ruin

Well it's quite rare when something come along and knocks you off guard with its originality and impressive performance but here Bereavement have done just that. This, their first album claims to have a "unique" sound, and be best described as "death/dark melodic metal". Well, although not entirely unique I can say that this band has brought something really quite interesting to the table with just their first attempt.

The music has clean vocals one minute and death metal style grunts the next, the guitars are kind of in a melodic death metal style for the most part of the CD, great double bass drumming when appropriate that also reaches some really quite extraordinary speeds in some songs, and the album doesn't stay at one pace either, in some parts you may call it even progressive. They claim to be unique, but at quite a few points in the album I can make similarities between this and the newer Enslaved material especially with the sound and style of the guitar playing, so you could call this a bit more of a melodic death metal version of the modern Enslaved if you like similarities like that.

It takes a while to really kick this album off though, after a nearly two minute instrumental introduction the first track doesn't capture so much of the imagination as later tracks on the album. It does however allow you to adjust to the sound of the album and band, and although not as fiery as later tracks it is still a great piece of work. The magic of this album comes in with "Eye Of The Storm" and carries through to "Loss" and the last two songs on the album "Conviction" and "Wellspring" are both impressive pieces of work as well. "Eye Of The Storm" hits you in the face with a magical up-tempo guitar melody and blistering double bass pounding away in the background as well, if you are going to check this out - this is the track to go for.

Beautiful but unfortunately not all that catchy guitar solos throughout the album as well as the odd acoustic guitar passage and whatever else they felt like throwing into the Bereavement mix really make this an extremely impressive album. It is hard to try and pick faults when the band clearly knows what they are doing here. All I can say is the production of the album is maybe a tiny bit thin with the guitars and drums, but this is not a major problem at all as you find yourself with your mouth wide open at the musicianship too much to bother with something so insignificant. Also the album is a little short at just over thirty-five minutes but quality is always preferred over quantity when it comes to metal.

This will probably appeal to quite a wide audience, of course people that like kind of progressive extreme metal as well as people with a sweet tooth for melodic death metal will find themselves loving this album. But it is as simple as this; if you like experimenting with intelligent and interesting extreme metal then this is most certainly for you - you must hear this.