Melodic Death Metal is truly a mixed bag of a genre. You often know what you will get when you press play. For every Carcass, The Black Dahlia Murder and Amorphis, there are thousands of At the Gates, In Flames and Insomnium clones. In short, no one aims to be themselves in this genre. As with all Melodic Death Metal, Dyssebeia has an uphill battle to fight for my interest, then. Garden of Stillborn Idols showcases an interesting amount of variety for a debut album, however. The flavor of Melodeath that Dyssebeia moves through is mainly of the At the Gates variety, and they come close to sounding like Mors Principium Est… in how they turn a riff with plenty of energy (listen to “Retribution” for a sample of this). The tracks on this album stretch between four and six minutes and they somewhat make up for the length by mixing things up in the songs in a way that is reminiscent of In Vain‘s work on their stellar Aenigma. There is some Black Metal here, as well as a kind of popular Blackened Death Metal style that is modern. But the songs will also take turns into In Flames-like dual guitar harmonies suddenly. It is occasionally a lot to take in for a 44 minute album.
At its best, these unexpected turns steer a song into something compelling (“Black Swarm”) but it is a dual edged sword as when the album is taking a lot of turns yet the main thrust of the song is not there, the song length drags on (“Hatch”). It is clear that Dyssebeia are skilled performers and writers but I still feel like there is something missing on their debut. A lot of the songs are impressive in their turns but they are unfortunately not very memorable. They nail the styles they work in but as songwriters they still have a way to go before making their work stand out. For regular Melodic Death Metal enjoyers, Garden of Stillborn Idols will probably turn a few heads. After all, riff go wroom. Dyssebeia‘s debut will be easy to recommend because of this. For me, they have made a statement and I will be interested in seeing where the style takes them. Not bad for a debut, really.
