GARDENIAN – Sindustries Review

GARDENIAN – Sindustries

Nuclear Blast Records

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Short career for these Swedish melodic death freaks, which is rather unfortunate. This one was a follow up from a more emotional album entitled “Soulburner”, that one is my absolute favorite. But yeah, I’m not entirely certain of the reasons of their departure from the Gothenburg music scene, it’s just sad.

Melodic death metal is actually my personal favorite genre of metal along with death metal and thrash. But these guys I favored their sophomore album and will never forget it. “Sindustries” packs a punch, just a B- rating by me though. I’ll explain…

The music is somewhat different than “Soulburner”, in fact it’s heavier/thicker sounding with the guitars. It’s not as noteworthy, but there still a lot of good songs. “Doom and Gloom” is one of them. They kind of pursued a more death metal approach to this one. The vocals vary, sometimes hoarse throat and sometimes clean, but I don’t think Erik Hawk doing clean on this one. He was my favorite guest vocalist on “Soulburner.” This album is a good follow up, though some songs just seemed mediocre to me. Others were pretty OK. However, it seemed to be a musical digression on this album, the melodic parts are there, just not as prevalent. I do like the fact that they used thicker guitar sounds on here, nothing can surpass “Soulburner” though. I can’t emphasize that enough. But still this release is quality, but I suppose they felt that they tried in the music scene and saw its flaws, so disbanding they had to do. But remember, their albums even this one are based solely on feel. That’s what’s so electric about them. They sound like no other just doing their music the way they wanted to. “Sindustries” will never be my favorite from theirs, but it’ll never exit my listening profile.

Production sound was solid. You can hear everything pretty well, so no complaints on that end. It just flowed eloquently and you can definitely get into the music because of the quality production.

I’ll never escape from their sophomore release, though this album is a close second. I’m going to have to take a gander at their first release. Sucks that 3 albums is all they produced in their short musical career. “Sindustries” packs a punch with that rhythm guitar. That’s probably what made it to be the most memorable part of the album.

Buy this, it’s worth it. It does take some getting used to, though.

Ryan “Death8699” Fanucchi