Band: Deadlock
Title: Manifesto
Label: Lifeforce Records
Distribution: Suburban
Release date: 17/11/2008
Review: CD

The band name ‘deadlock’… There were the nineties Thrash bands from the UK and from Ireland, you got the Swedish Thrash formation, which is now called Triggered, in Austria you had a so-called Death Metal band, and in Germany, well, at least three bands have that very same moniker: a brutal Thrash formation from Baden-Württemberg, a Nuremberg-based Thrash band from the eighties, and Deadlock from Schwarzenfeld, Bavaria. The latter was formed in 1997 and evolved throughout the years to a mature and professional band. The evolution was now come to a level of pure poetry. The album lasts for almost forty seven minutes and opens with The Moribund Choir vs. The Trumpets Of Armageddon. This Electronic track is the perfect opener for Martyr To Science, which deals with the use and abuse of animals by the human kind. Musically, the technical Dark Metal track is pretty catchy and melodic, but very varying too. Elements from Death Metal and Gothic Metal easily support the up-tempo riffs, and the virtuosic guitar solos exhale both melancholy and anger. Vocally, Deadlock consists of the strong voice of Sabine Weniger, who also performs on keyboards, and whose voice reminds me, from time to time, to former The Gathering-singer Anneke Van Giersbergen, and death grunter Johannes Prem, who also uses other vocal timbres. Every single track is varying, and besides (sometimes extreme) tempo-changes, a song easily contains progressive, brutal, orchestral and/or atmospheric parts. A few apart and unexpected elements are, for example, like the surprising Hip Hop-part in Deathrace, the semi-ballad Altruism, the cold, grim sounds of the symphonic-industrial title track, the saxophone in Fire At Will, or the own interpretation of Sisters Of Mercy’s Temple Of Love. Before, the band often got accused being a clone of the Swedish scene, but those too predictable elements have gone for the better part. And what’s more, this band has finally set its footprint on our dead planet’s soil with an own, proper approach and intelligent creativity. This majestic Progressive Dark / Death / Gothic Metal-band with its critical lyrics on mankind has made a huge effort forwards with Manifesto.

83/100

Ivan Tibos.