Review & Interview

2002
SALEM - Collective Demise


CD REVIEW

Hey guys, guise what, I've got an unknown band forth album and guise what, it's awesome! Salem, an Israel based power metal band, formed by four guys back in 1985 (a year after I was born), and IMO, they are underrated, why? because they live in Israel....now we know there is more than just war and chaos, but there are actually pure musicians who writes music for fans around the world.

I am glad to quote what the band bio says, but heh its way too long and way to descriptive, I will just make it short :). They have produced 4 records and a couple of demos out since the year they were formed, and each piece are tattooed with their melodic, exotic sound, and Collective Demise is just a starting point for the band to be the Grandmaster of Metal. Collective Demise, written and produced by the band themselves proved to be much heavier and more aggressive than their previous ones. After all these great metal years, the band has somewhat matured and evolved to new materials but keeping their identity the same.

Salem has manage to mix down their eastern sound with heavy metal influence, which can be heard in most tracks. The choruses and solos are fascinating. The growling vocals and the thumping drumming just deserve lots of compliments. Most band tends to make boring verse, and just jumps to the chorus. But not Salem. Their verses are beautifully compose with dark lyrics. The melody seems to change from one to another in each song which makes each song less boring.

Intro track "broken Yet United" is a fast hard hitting music. Nice song to start the album off. Then there's is a cool mid-percussion which is done by an Afro-samba percussion. The second track, which is my personal favorite is "Coming End Of Reason". Its not the heavy guitars, its not the rifty bass lines and its not the drumming. It's the sweet feminine singer than backs the main vocals. This makes the song extra special and stands out than the other. Visually, I see a young girl protected by a masculine man. The melody line sang by both singers are excellent. Could NOT be any better than this.

"Act Of War" is an exotic eastern sound. It starts off with Indian drumming, and then the clean guitar, which plays the eastern melody comes in. When the vocals scream and start to sing, it looses it's melody but gain some heaviness. This puts me off a bit as I really do prefer the eastern melodic touch. But hey, power metal is still ok in my book.

"Recall" is another example of melodic song by this band. It has small violin parts, which creates an ambient innocent image to this hardcore evil song. Pretty cool IMO, this kind of songs are hard to write I think, since I hardly ever hear anything like this.

Well. Salem is an old band. Rocking since the 80s. But really, their music hasn't aged! Their music is as mature as metal can be. The materials are original and nicely composed. Mind you, Salem is heavier than their last previous albums. So expect no other !
Matt Dammit
RocKNet.nl
1