ALBUM REVIEW: Doomsday – Deserted Fear

It’s been a whole decade since Eisenberg’s DESERTED FEAR shot onto death metal radars with their debut full-length My Empire. The German trio have set about making a steady name for themselves ever since, landing support slots with the revered likes of MORBID ANGEL and MORGOTH, and signing to Century Media Records in 2016. Doomsday is their third effort with the respected label, and fifth overall. Set for release this Friday, it finds the band claiming to have embraced their creative freedom more than ever before. Naturally then, the question is do those claims hold up?

In short, yes. Doomsday is surely the band’s grandest and most polished work to date. It marks a slight departure from the most brutal aspects of their sound – these heard perhaps more prominently on 2019’s Drowned By Humanity, for example – with the band instead leaning more heavily than ever into their melodic sensibilities for an album of sweeping and epic scale. That said, fans of the band’s harder and heavier fare needn’t have much to fear; this is a massive, muscular melodeath record produced to crisply potent clarity by the band’s own guitarist Fabian Hildebrandt.

DESERTED FEAR set the stage in relatively cinematic fashion with the album’s brief opening track, simply titled Intro. Admittedly, it’s a somewhat generic piece, but it still does a good job of building anticipation for what’s to come. The record soon takes on a propulsive quality from there, thundering into life with lead single Part Of The End. It’s a rousing first song proper, with soaring leads and crushing riffs sitting atop powerhouse double kick drum work. Follow The Light That Blinds proves a similarly towering affair, its melodic leads, thrashing pace and barked titular hook all combining for the kind of track you could imagine booming out of a late afternoon Download slot.

For all its invariably solid execution, Doomsday doesn’t do loads to step out of pretty standard metal territory. Essentially what we’ve got here are nine solid metal tracks set up by the aforementioned Intro, and broken pretty evenly in half by the almost gothic sixth track interlude At Its End. Its second half is no weaker than its first, but you may have had your fill towards the record’s end. That said, a 41-minute runtime works sensibly, and the pace remains high enough to avoid any real stagnation. The One Desire provides another well-rounded pummelling, for example, while Voices Of Fire’s chug-heavy riffs make for a later highlight.

Ultimately then, while DESERTED FEAR’s claims to have embraced creative freedom ring true enough for Doomsday, there isn’t much here to leave jaws on the floor. In a world of some truly mind-bending takes on death metal, this record is just steady and solid. To be honest though, sometimes that’s all you need. Hildebrandt’s production is excellent, and it’s clear that the band have put plenty of craft and skill into these songs. Doomsday might not dazzle, but there’s still plenty to enjoy here if you accept it for what it is.

Rating: 7/10

Doomsday is set for release on March 4th via Century Media Records.

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