Arsenic Addiction – Requiem of the Fallen (2010)

With the current boom of female fronted bands where the girl does the harsh vocals, it’s almost impossible to find a band that is good enough when comes to mixing both clean and harsh vocals. Arsenic Addiction is probably one of the few bands that fit this description and that we can stand for more than 10 minutes.

While most people think that Kittie and bands like Otep, Walls of Jerico, etc. were the first bands to use harsh female vocals, they cannot be more wrong. We remember back in the day, getting a demo CD from an American band named: Forty Days Longing, and if you heard the album you would be easily convinced the singer was a very brutal dude, but surprise to us, it was Zdenka Prado a female vocalist (she also provides screams for Garden Of Shadows, and currently for Estuary (ex-Estuary of Calamity).

Enough with the American metal scene history lesson and back with Arsenic Addiction, hailing from the Mormon state of Utah, we can surely image none of the band members partake in these shenanigans. Playing a mixture of genres, the band combines elements of Metalcore, Nu Metal and Trash to create a very aggressive atmosphere that is very nicely contrasted with clean female vocals.

The combination of harsh vocals using a wide variety of ranges with the clean sections is done very well, almost as good as Kittie achieved on their last album. We think that maybe some extra layering effects would give Arsenic Addiction a more aggressive edge, but it’s good as is.

The riffing in this album is somewhat standard, and the distortion is nice and dirty. This creates a very solid atmosphere and gives a nice sound to the band. The drumming is very tight, providing nice fills and tempo changes. The overall production on this album is very good.

Overall, “Requiem of the Fallen” is a pretty solid album from a band that might be capitalizing on the current ‘brutal female-fronted’ trend, but they can hold their own with their music and not the gimmicks. In a few months they will be releasing “An Undertakers Lament”, a full-length release that will surely be a considerable improvement.

Release: 2009

Country: USA