Right at the beginning I have to mention a negative point of criticism: the playing time of Born From Ashes is too short! That’s all I can find fault with this release…at first I’d like to highlight the really felicitous optical aspect; the cover and the professional as well as stylish packaging lets me expect quite a lot. In addition I had the chance to make sure of MIDGARD’s song-writing quality live on stage.
The band lives up to the listener’s expectations completely and enthuses with high class, melodic Death Metal of variable kind in very pleasing sound quality. Lead in by an acoustic guitar intro, which is entitled adequately Prelude To Insanity, Born From Ashes arrests attention from the beginning. Nice melodies always form the songs’ centrepiece played in mid tempo in the majority of cases. Sometimes the accelerator pedal is tromped a little bit more and so the music spreads a lot of variability and good temper, particularly concerning vocal performance. Vocalist Peter is able to use his vocal chords really many-sided, mostly thrashy-screeching, but also clean vocals appear. These ones need getting used to, but that’s one reason why MIDGARD gets distinctively and stands out from the crowd of similar sounding bands. Besides the first class melody lines, the four guys from Styria are brilliant in performing premium ear-candy refrains and intelligent lyrics. MIDGARD takes best effect when pulling out a groovy head-banger part out of the hat, like in Trapped In My Black Shadow. MIDGARD can build up suspense by taking out speed and turns out to be competent as well as creative in terms of song-writing. Sometimes I wish that the band works out the details of a well-done song idea a little bit longer – some songs are over too early, e.g. The Pain Remains. This leads me back to my introducing criticism, but it does not have an effect on the overall performance. The reviewer is all around content!