Band: As Memory Dies
Title: Transmutate
Label: Own release
Distribution: Metal Revelation
Release date: 02/01/2010
Review: CD

As Memory Dies are an Italian band, formed in 2005, debuting with Transmutate. This recording was conceived at Dungeon Studio and mixed / mastered at Haunted Studio throughout 2009, and the whole lasts for almost fifty minutes.

The album is a very varying piece of Metal, combining Death Metal with Thrash Metal elements, varying in tempo (from rather slow to blasting fast) and melody, interacting between harsh aggression and emotional acoustic pieces etc. Also the vocals vary a lot: screams and grunts, as well as melodious and harmonious chants. At the same time, Transmutation sounds modern and progressive, interspersed with old styled elements (eighties / early nineties), balancing between melodic and straight-forward.
And about this ‘variety’, well, I can go on. But at the same time it brings me to the ‘dark side’ of this recording: the lack of cohesion, the sad search for an own identity. It reminds me to the Swedish scene, it reminds me to the Italian one, I must even think about (early) Rhymes Of Destruction, but I can’t find a specific goal, a foreseen structure behind the whole package.

I do foresee a future in case this band gets focused on an own musical approach, so next time you guys will impress me? The skills are present, so use them wisely!
By the way, the album ends with the band’s interpretation of a story by Christopher Marlowe, a well-known and highly appreciated English writer who lived about four hundred years ago.

77/100

Ivan Tibos.