Becoming the
Archetype - Terminate Damnation (Solid State) 2005
1. "March of The Dead"
(1:48)
2. "Into Oblivion" (6:03)
3. "One Man Parade" (4:56)
4. "Elegy" (11:17)
.....I. Deception
.....II. Lament [instrumental]
.....III. Triumph [instrumental]
5. "Night's Sorrow" [instrumental] (3:57)
6. "The Epigone" (5:03)
7. "Beyond Adaptation" (2:36)
8. "No Fall Too Far'" (5:48)
9. "Ex Nihilo" (5:08)
10. "Denouement" [instrumental] (1:51)
11. "The Trivial Paroxysm" (6:35)
In some circles, Becoming the Archetype became the Hot Topic band to love among teens and twenty-somethings. I gave this album a listen as a new release when the band had it streaming for free on their web site. At the time I thought it was good mixture of melodic death metal and metalcore but was also very tired of the vocal style since every new band coming out seems to share the same boring, pissed-off, cookie monster vocalist. Over time I've come to appreciate this album a bit more, although I still find the vocals to be a bit generic and lacking much charisma. Becoming the Archetype base their sound on heavily down tuned guitars. They use a lot of piano interludes and instrumental passages to tie all their death metal and metalcore mayhem together. I think some of the instrumental passages detract from the songs a bit and tend to get a bit boring after a while. The eleven minute, three part track "Elegy", for example, starts off crushingly heavy only to break down into a fairly lengthy, somber piano solo at the end. It's sort of a shame really as the first five to six minutes of the song are very good. "Night's Sorrow" is an acoustic guitar instrumental that is actually quite good, but also really out of place. It might have worked better had it not followed the lengthy instrumental sections of "Elegy". I suppose these instrumental passages help to break up the overall monotony. The shorter, heavy songs, such as "Into Oblivion" and "The Epigone" are the strongest and have enough melody mixed into the chaos to keep me interested. Production is top notch and is wrapped in a cool cover art to boot.
Some have said that the album title is in tribute to the mighty Mortification. "Terminate Damnation" is indeed a classic Mortification track. However, I have never heard this confirmed by the band.