German melodic death metal Metal Bladers Fragments Of Unbecoming’s previous album I graced with 7 out of 10. It was nice at times, but failed in production, didn’t have real grunts, no guitar solo’s and no special, defining features. Back then I also said the genre of (Swedish) death metal wasn’t really my cup of tea, but rest assured: that has changed. Furthermore, it’s been two years since FOU’s debut full length, “Skywards” (etcetera), and it sure shows on (here we go) “Sterling Black Icon-Chapter III: Black But Shining”. This album is fucking awesome.
Oh wait: for the most part, that is.

Since they try to tell some kind of story with the names of their albums, and accordingly named intro’s and outtro’s and all, I’ll divide my review into three parts: tracks 1 through 4 provide the forming of the story, 5 through 8 the main tale, whilst 9 through 12 make for the final chapters and thus also the conclusion.
The album opener ‘Carmine Preface (Entrance)’ is a skit that sets the tone for the songs to come: gloomy, dragging and pensive and it transcends logically into the next track: one of the highlights of the album. The first third of the album is great. It’s melodic death at its finest: great riffs, great structure, heavy double kicked drums and convincing, slow, low grunts (and similar types of vocals, be they somewhat higher pitched or almost screamed), with mournful, at times suicidal lyrics. The best feature yet is that the music really drags the listener into it, and grabs complete attention. The forming of the story is quite awesome: 9 out of 10.

‘Breath In The Black To See’ (track 5 obviously, are you paying attention?), starts out quite a bit differently. A speedy beginning, lots of anger and growling grunts. Especially the part where the drums speed up and the (new) vocalist growls in his lowest possible voice: “There’s no time for just waiting”, etcetera, etcetera, but the way he growls that into the mic is just bleeping marvellous. Six is a skit -and a beautiful one at that- and forms a bridge for the further stages of (here it comes, the full title) "Sterling Black Icon chapter III: Black But Shining". Yet again an interlude forms images of doom, dark nights and black thoughts.
The song that follows is truly fabulous: ‘A Faint Illumination’. It is the now familiar mix of brutality, melody, low grunts and double kicked drums, but on this one everything really is perfectly balanced. If this was the only good song on the album, I would still have to grace this album with a 5.5, for sheer potential. Towards the end of the song, after a break of pace there’s a kind of rolling riff, backed by a moving, heart wrenching scream and lots of drum activity.

Fucking impressive. No, F-u-c-k-i-n-g impressive.
The self proclaimed middle section of the album ends with a more upbeat track, more on the brutal side of things, which starts out as somewhat standard death metal fare, but right before that thought really sticks they change it up, or rather: down. They slow down, throw a slow guitar solo over the mix and revive the track from its semi-coma. That’s just good all round musicianship. They actually do this twice in the song, but the second time in a different way. A really good middle section, maybe even slightly better than the jump off: 9.2 out of 10.

The last stages then: three songs and a goodbye skit. The final third starts off in half assed fashion. ‘Scythe Of The Scarecrow’ is definitely the least good song until now and knows only a handful of redeeming moments. Sadly, those redeeming moments are obliterated by cliché death metal work, with less melody, less inspiration: a barren, dreadful, unsurprising soundscape. After ‘Scythe’ there’s a 95 second instrumental piece that leads up to the song before last: ‘Stand The Tempest’, which is pretty much the same type of track as the aforementioned ‘Scythe’. In this one only the last part is of interest.
The outtro ‘Chambre Noire (Departure)’ is a piano piece of about two minutes with some footstep sounds in the beginning. Someone leaving I presume. The piano piece is quite beautiful and forms a very decent way to end a very good album. Nevertheless, these last chapters were not all that engaging and not very original. Lucky for them they were saved by ‘Chambre Noire’: 7 out of 10.

All in all, ‘Sterling Black Icon chapter III: Black But Shining’ is a really good album, brought out of its near perfect balance by ‘Scythe Of The Scarecrow’ and ‘Stand The Tempest’. Still though, these Germans deserve full credit for having created a great melodic death metal album that will surely gain them lots of fans. More praise to them even, for having dissolved all the complaints I had about their last album: this one has a couple of well placed guitar solo’s, really solid production, adding more depth and balance to their sound, a new vocalist (well, he’s been with the band since 2004, but joined after the release of ‘Skywards’) for the ‘real’ grunting and have found a defining feature: convincing emotion through brutality, intricate melodies, marvellous riffs, some post-production ambient sounds and just great general musicianship.
Thus: if you liked the last album, you’ll love ‘Sterling Black Icon’.