Orwell – Endeavors (2009)

Out of the countless new bands playing Melodic Death Metal is not hard to identify which ones are worth listening to and which ones are just products of trendsters trying to make a quick buck. Orwell from Wisconsin is one of the few that are worth listening to. The band combines the old Swedish Melodic DM sound with some Trash influences and bits of the more modern Metalcore sound.

Delivering one crushing tracks after another one; “Endeavors” is a very powerful second release from this young American band that hopefully dethrones most of the current trendy Metalcore bands that the kiddies seem to enjoy so much. With its strong Swedish influences, Orwell demanded immediate attention from us, and will surely do the same for the rest of the listeners.

All through the album Orwell does a great job in creating powerful, melodic, riff-driven songs that are very different to most stuff released by American bands these days. With the exception of the song “Anticipation”, all songs are very heavy and powerful, featuring nice alternations between melodic linear sections with faster and a bit more brutal passages. The harsh vocals are pretty constant and well fitting for the music that the band plays, they never go clean or feel like shouts.

As for bad things, we can say that Orwell is a bit of a one trick pony, they have good riffs but some songs feel very repetitive and sometimes the album can get a bit dull since it feels very linear (except for the song “Anticipation”). But we don’t think that this is a terrible thing, since the band is relatively young, they have yet to grow musically. We expect them to get considerably better for their next releases so we are just mentioning this as constructive criticism.

For being a young band Orwell is very promising in the American scene, hopefully they never go commercial a start playing shit with massive amounts of breakdowns and clean vocals. We expect more and better from this band in the future.

Release: 2009

Country: USA