Forever Endeavor, the

Enforsaken – The Forever Endeavor (Olympic Recordings)
Melodic death metal. Borrows heavily (very heavily) from the Swedish school, but I also hear the melody of some of the Finnish bands (COB, Kalmah). Overall pretty intense, great riffs, great growled vocals, nice drumming that never becomes too predictable, and a general sound that obviously takes in a lot of influences, from folk-type stuff to black metal. The entire CD is, with a few minor exceptions, mid-tempo and peppered with great solos. Also, pristine production and a superb mastering job courtesy of a certain James Murphy (sounds familiar, no?). I dig. One noticeable flaw is that the songs are, on average, too long for their own good (meaning, they could be trimmed by a minute each, at least). Oh well.

Tracks:
1) Starts out with a really cool catchy riff and has some soaring clean-like vocals in the chorus.
2) Starts out with some acoustic guitar, and then becomes old-school In Flames worship, but with some neat modern influences, like pinch harmonics and the such.
3) More progressive in the riff department, but the galloping drums are still there, and it definitely has that Maiden-on-speed feel.
4) Downtuned riffs that eventually speed up with some cool harmonies. Sounds a lot like Dark Tranquillity, especially the mid-section.
5) Starts slow but then picks up with some damn near blast beats and some really cool and effective galloping rhythms and great solo.
6) An excellent riff progression on this tune, it actually sounds a lot like something I’d imagine Chuck Schuldiner would come up with. Neat!
7) More soaring almost-clean vocals in the chorus, and another nice set of riffs.
8) Starts out really fast and aggressive but then settles into the mid-paced growl- and riff-fest that’s quite commonplace here, with the requisite 30-note riffs.
9) Shorter song, by comparison, and far more aggressive, and also has some Slayer-esque solos and a constant double bass barrage running right through it.
10) Starts out like the rest, but has the clean/chanted vocals in the chorus as well as all the elements to be the mandatory “slow/ballad” song. Amazing solo courtesy of Murphy himself.