The name “The Black Dahlia Murder” was derived from the actual murder case of Elisabeth Short a.k.a. The Black Dahlia, which was never solved. The Black Dahlia Murder come from Detroit but they sound as they could have been born and bred in Sweden. This is another fine example of Melodic death metal but there’s more...From their home country they also took a fair amount of Florida Death metal and thus they created a very melodic yet brutal combination of both styles.

This results in a nice listening experience but I can’t say this will be a classic album. Even if you listen to it multiple times, like I of course did, there’s not a feeling of recognition in the tracks.

All the tracks have more or less the same ingredients, the songs are played tight, the vocals are all right, and the sound is okay. But there’s never that touch of genius that makes a record truly great.

That said, I certainly don’t want to bash The Black Dahlia Murder, maybe for some people it will be the ‘breath of fresh air in a scene that needs a band to lead it in the new direction of metal’, at least according to the biography. To me it’s just a combination of two styles, not an entirely new thing.

A decent album but not one that’s going to be in my CD player for ages, there’s just too much competition out there.