Hailing from Drancy, France, YORBLIND range in the hip but sucked off area of melodic Death Metal. I did not expect any surprises while reading the few introducing info lines and at the end… there is nothing new offered.
Anyway, at least these French mates are not stringently geared to In Flames and Soilwork (as most of the bands in this area), but Dark Tranquillity’s album Projector was seemingly spinning off. That cares for more atmospheric depth as you get usually, but on the other hand, songs like Place Of Death and Fucking Sickness are not thoroughly composed and arranged. On the opposite you have well-done tracks like Regret, New Life and the opener Hybrid. But I don’t want to conceal that these tracks first unfold its effect after several runs, what is unusual for this musical direction. Either it gets stuck or it won’t never ever.
Furthermore it strikes me that YORBLIND use some uncommon keyboard sounds as on Devil’s Garden and Tortured Souls. On Forget one additionally gets female singing, but in default of detailed info I cannot tell you who this guest singer is.
At the end of Melancholy Souls the band gets puffed. Available ideas cannot keep a constant quality over the entire album. Biggest weak points in my opinion are the one-dimensional sounding singer and the harmony-leads that are too similar to each other. Generally speaking YORBLIND don’t leave anything scorched technically and producer Terje Refnes from Soundside Studio adds a powerful sound. But that doesn’t cover the band’s problems with its own style and identity. 6.5 points the band has candidly deserved.