Artist: Dead Man's Chamber
Title: Porn Fiction
Type: Album
Label: Self Released

Porn Fiction, eh ? Blimey, sounds like the kind of jazz-mag inspired metal that might have suited me better in my teen years. The inlay card does seem to have some woodcut type picture of a severed penis, which does contrast nicely with the skeleton of a bird (of the avian variety), all of which is pretty random. From what I can tell, DMC are a German band, and as they add, tongue in cheek style on their myspace page, they are now ready to play “living rooms, guerrilla and prison gigs”. Ten out of ten for honesty, then.

The neat little six track EP contains some modern minded melodic death metal, heavy on the riffing and chunky axe work, complete with some minor hardcore influences in some of the more angular phrases. Head shrieker Florian Friedrich has an accomplished shriek, at times sounding almost Lindberg-esque when it reaches for the high register, while the guitar work of Hendrik Isenberg and Robert Pielmeiher weave some effective and memorable melodies around the foot-stomping almost Anthraxian demi-mosh riff salads. Refraining from the worst excesses of the tired old melodic death metal clichés and adding some sparse deftly added breakdowns into the mix, DMC manage to sound fresher than most of their contemporaries and avoid the worst offences of many of their peers.

While the song writing does bring together the worlds of “Terminal Spirit Disease” era At The Gates and modern chugga-chugga, it’s only fair to mention that the production is thinner than Kiera Knightley on the Kate Moss diet, robbing the songs of their power to some extent, especially in the anaemic drum and bass department. That aside, on the plus side, the seeds of an effective band are clearly beginning to germinate on this release, and that means that given enough time and a halfway decent production, DMC could find themselves finally outgrowing their living room live circuit aspirations.

http://www.myspace.com/deadmanschamber