Your Demons : Their Angers (EU)

Originally released to little fanfare in 2007, Miseration's Your Demons Their Angels was picked up for reissue just one year later by LifeForce Records, when positive word had spread far enough that it became impossible to ignore. A side project for Scar Symmetry vocalist Christian Älvestam, Miseration evidently exists primarily as a forum where he can exercise his Cookie Monster fantasies to the extreme, which leaves surprisingly little room for his remarkably accomplished clean singing to surface amid the prevailing death metal brutality (see brief snippets of "Perfection Destroyed," "World Lethality," "Chain-Work Soul"). Instrumentally speaking, Miseration's ever-shifting compositions (in this sense they have a lot in common with those of Scar Symmetry, just more brutal) lie somewhere betwixt the highly technical American/Canadian school of death metal and the slightly less oppressive and melodic Swedish scene -- with orchestrated synth backdrops further enriching a few tracks like "The End Designed" and the stupendously violent "Seven Are the Souls." And yet perhaps the most amazing thing about the album's impressive musical achievement is the fact that all instruments, save for those synths (i.e. guitars, bass, drums), were performed by Älvestam's collaborator-in-crime, Jani Stefanovic -- that and the rumors that the pair have Christian leanings amid all of this wholesale sonic Armageddon. Confused? Don't be; just a little bit of faith -- religious or otherwise -- is all one needs to see and hear Miseration's fascinating metallic onslaught revealed in all of its beautifully grotesque glory. [The CD was also released with a bonus track, "Free from Light DeVoid of Fire."] ~ Eduardo Rivadavia|