The Seventh- Cursed Earth Wasteland

I was more than a little worried when I saw Belgium's The Seventh's new album "Cursed Earth Wasteland" had come. The reason being that their demo album was pretty bad. So without expecting too much I threw it in and gave it a listen. This isn't the same band that released "Only Blackness Radiates" three years ago. They've definitely improved within the past few years and the first thing I noticed was the production. This totally blows away the sound they had back then. Instead of self producing this album they went to Soundlodge Studio in Germany to record and it was a good decision. The Seventh are very competent musicians, especially Tony's drum playing which is really fast. With Gerhard and Brad on guitar and Gert on bass, these Belgian's play melodic death really well. Facial D's raspy vocal delivery is done well and the only problem I can hear with these guys is that their songs and sound are very typical for this genre. Though they do everything well, there isn't anything here that is highly original. This isn't a bad release, it's just all been done countless times before. I look forward to hearing more from these guys to see if they can put some originality back into melodic death metal as they definitely have the skill.