Review by Adam M on April 27, 2021.

This album Impermanent has a nice feel of improving or progressing from material out by the likes of Arch Enemy and At the Gates. There are certainly more nods to the former. This can be found largely in the harsh female vocals and the amount of melody used. Otherwise, the heaviness of the album recalls At the Gates as does some of the melody used. This is a very abrasive collection of songs that injects the proper melody at the right moments.

The result is an interesting contribution to the melodic death metal genre that shows some degree of freshness. In terms of musicianship, the vocals are female and alternate between harsh and clean types as can be seen from the first song alone “Natsukashi”. Guitars are melodic and heavy at once complementing the vocals nicely. Some solid drumming rounds out the musicianship, but pales compared to the guitar work. All in all Impermanent does a good job of mixing up some musical styles to create an interesting mixture for melodic death metal. While this has been done before, there are enough new ideas to make for a fresh addition to the genre. This is one of the more interesting attempts to vary the style that has been done before many times in the past. An issue with the album is clearly the lack of originality despite mixing up the ideas nicely. This could still be further refined in the future.

The album was a fresh take for the genre and should be checked out by melodic death metal fans. It thus comes fairly highly recommended. With a greater emphasis on the progressive aspects of the band’s music, there can only be more positive things to come from Aversed in the future and I for one highly look forward to them.

Rating: 7.4 out of 10