Open Denile: Visions of the Next Dimension

Hailing from the Bronx, NY is the Death Metal band, Open Denile. The 4 piece unit sights bands like Cradle of Filth and Between the Buried and Me as influences to their breed of sometime Melodic Death Metal. They remind me of Dethklok meets a generic speedy Death Metal band. The band's first record, Visions of the Next Dimension, does not set this reviewers heart a flutter with excitement, but find out why.

This 7 track album is heavily steeped in Classic Death Metal fodder with some over the top speed that doesn't always get pulled off thoroughly. As with most Death Metal, 90% of the vocals are of the growly, Cookie Monster variety and I for one get bored with this fairly easily, unless done tastefully and texturally, ala Opeth. Open Denile does use the oft clean vocal, but they don't balance things out and are actually pretty weak. But the instrumental, "An Absolute Memory", does venture into some Jazzy type feel complete with spacey keyboards and unfortunately some rather poorly played lead guitar by lead singer and lead guitarist, Craig Stoner. Much of Stoner's lead work on this song, in particular, goes in and out of key and sounds very dissonant.

Much of Open Denile's Visions of the Next Dimension has a futuristic feel to it, especially with their spatial use of the keyboards and with their almost Prog-like riffing at times. Open Denile is trying to take this genre to another level, but this isn't it. I didn't find anything that really grabbed me at all, except the CD closer, "Immortalized". This song does have some depth to it and takes you for a ride in a few different directions however, most of this record finds songs way too long and simply for the sake of being long. Open Denile are a Death Metal band for sure and obviously pride themselves on being unpredictable, a little eccentric and with some progressive qualities, but these things together do not make up a cohesive effort and I found it a bit much to listen to.

Track Listing:
1. Descent Into Denile
2. Vivid Degradation
3. Pathogen Eradication
4. Perish
5. An Absolute Memory
6. Blessed
7. Immortalized

Added: November 2nd 2012
Reviewer: Butch Jones
Score:
Related Link: Band Facebook Page
Hits: 1903
Language: english

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