Fatal Embrace – The Empires of Inhumanity (2010)

Today we have yet another old-school Trash Metal band. Fatal Embrace has been around for over 17 years and for some reason has only managed to release 4 albums in their long career. Signed now to Metal Blade records, we image that they are trying to capitalize on the current Trash Metal revival.

The influences presented on “The Empires of Inhumanity” are too many to count, but we can tell you that the band sounds like Kreator, Slayer, Dark Angel, and Sodom. Sounds impressive on paper right?, well… the band has it’s moments but they show no originality or evolution whatsoever. On “The Empires of Inhumanity” we get 11 tracks (plus 1 cover) of well executed old-school Trash that will surely get all the fans of the genre jumping on their seats, but gets old very quickly.

The riffing behind this release is very solid and has very interesting moments here and there; the solos are blistering and very well placed. In essence the band has all the right elements, but fails to create something that will warrant them a place with the true Trash Metal legends.

Dirk Heiland’s vocals are probably the thing we like the most about this release. He manages to sound like Tom Araya, Schmier and sometimes even like old-school James Hetfield. He does have his own characteristics that make him a bit different and not too annoying like some of the old-school vocalists (at least for us).

The music itself is well crafted and captures the Trash Metal feeling perfectly, but like we mentioned, this album is devoid of any originality or ‘holy shit’ moments, it’s just standard and that’s all. If you like your Trash Metal to sound the way it did on the late 80’s, then you will love this release.

Overall, we can see that Fata Embrace is a good mature band, not a bunch of 16 year-olds trying to play old-school music. However, the band lacks imagination to be considered one of the best in the genre. If you want a standard Trash Metal release with good production and enough different riffs to keep you listening to the whole album, you cannot go wrong with “The Empires of Inhumanity”.

Release: June 8th, 2010

Country: Germany