Many metalfans have missed this melodic death album, released in 1999.
Gardenian's Soulburner is a must-have in every death metal collection for it's powerful production, excellent growling vocals, heavy riffs, catchy melodies, and the effective clean vocals delivered by Erik Hawk.
The album opens with the fast "As a True King", a death metal anthem with one of the grooviest middle parts I've heard. This song just forces the listener to leave the couch to headbang around the living room.
The second track "Powertool" is, if possible even more catchy, and is a song I'd really like to hear live for it's amazing riff and sheer heaviness. Another classic.
The third track, the short "Deserted" is a more melodic piece, reminiscent of In Flames. In this track we are first introduced to Erik Hawk's clean vocals and boy do they work - it lifts the track to excellency.
It's back to full power with the title track, one of my favorite death metal songs ever. It's heavy and melodic, and groovy.
Further on the band introduces to tracks leaning more to heavy metal, "If Tomorrow's Gone" and "Tell the World I'm Sorry", two fantastic anthems which allowed me to play some metal at parties with discogirls and gaylords without getting the music thrown off at once.
"Ecstacy of Life" and "Chaos in Flesh" are melodic toughies, while the final track is a bombastic, powerful and ultimately fantastic song - "Black Days", with it's almost unhearable low-keyed keyboards powering the incredible riffs and Hawk's sing-along vocals. It makes me want to start the record all over again.
I bought this record on impulse - I never regretted that
If I ave to draw one comparison to any other band, I'd say Edge Of Sanity. So if you like that band, you could do worse than check out the classic 'Soulburner'. It's as good today as it was in 1999.
