Sangre Eterna – Asphyxia (2012)

Making its way to our PO BOX courtesy of Maple Metal Records, today we have Sangre Eterna’s second full-length release “Asphyxia”. In this very interesting release we have a talented Serbian band that plays Melodic Death Metal and features some guest appearances by many Metal stars from Finland. If you like traditional Melodic Death Metal without the fagginess of modern Melodeath releases, “Asphyxia” is the album for you.

For over 11 tracks, Sangre Eterna delivers powerful guitar riffing, very catchy melodic sections accompanied by keyboard arrangements and an overall excellent atmosphere that is rare these days. Opening with “The End of Beauty”, the riff machine starts immediately and you get that unmistakable Swedish Melodic Death Metal vibe with an edge of Finland’s own take of the genre. With no guest appearances on this track, the band gives the listener a taste of their own sound without any ‘distortion’ and we give them great props for that.

“The Masquerade” features an appearance by Aleksi Sihvonen (Norther,Imperanon) on vocals and you can immediately tell the difference when they get paired against the band’s own vocalist Ilija Stevanović. Both of them nicely complement each other since Ilija’s vocals are more on the growls territory. The melodic passages on this track are top notch making this song very good. Using a sample of the movie Saw, “Confession and Death” blast away next with the help of Tapio Wilska (ex-Finntroll).

Sangre Eternal keeps going with the next two songs:“Illusions of Fate” and “Seventh Angel”, without the need of any additional guests and manage to deliver two excellent tracks that will have any fan of the genre headbanging instantly. “The Echoes of My Loss” features Jovana Karajanov of Tales of Dark proving her very nice vocals and making this song even more especial nearing the end, this reminded us a bit of how Eternal Tears of Sorrow sounds like. The band uses more keyboards on their following tracks “Lut Gholein”, “Alessa’s Dream” and “Asphixia” giving them a certain similarity to a less ‘futuristic’ Dark Tranquility.

Closing this release we have the ‘rock version’ of “Seventh Angel” with the participation of Juha Kylmänen (For my Pain) and Jarmo Kylmänen (Eternal Tears of Sorrow). This track is by far the best on the album due to the nicely contrasting keyboard elements with the pounding guitars and very intricate drumming. The clean vocals are magical as always from the two Fins, but the conversion of the ‘hard’ version of the song to this one makes them work perfectly. We are highly impressed by the bands maturity and ability to craft songs of this level.

In general, “Asphixya” is a MUST HAVE release for any fan of Melodic Death Metal. The guest appearances are just the icing on the cake, but the damn cake by itself is pretty darn delicious. These Serbians show that there is no need to go full-on commercial Melodeath to produce and album that is original, highly entertaining, and very engaging. We can’t wait to hear what the band does next.

Release: February 17th, 2012

Country: Serbia