With the abundance of hardcore and metalcore releases these days it is nice to hear The Embodiment discharge their brew of old-fashioned melodic death/thrash metal upon the heavy music audience. During eight decent tracks they deliver solid and well-executed music with a sense of dynamics and restrained but fitting melodies.

While not original in every respect, The Embodiment know how to master their art. Their music resembles the stripped-down and straight-to-the-point death metal the originators of the Götenburg scene started out with in the 90’s. They hold about the middle-ground between bands like At The Gates and Gates Of Isthar, even though approached from a slightly more violent and thrashy angle. In addition, The Embodiment remind me of their countrymen Detonation a moment or two, which is altogether not a bad thing if you ask me. The band is definitely aware of the premises of the style; aggression is combined with fast alternating riffs and apt solos.

A strong point, if not perfect, is the production of the album; while clear enough to discern all individual instruments and their wanderings, it maintains that dry and crude edge which is more appropriate for this type of music than a fully polished modern sound.

While Legeon is quite steady troughout, the album is elevated by tracks like ‘Y2K’, ‘Careless’ and the title-song. The latter in particular grabs your attention because of its last two minutes in which the band shows they also know how to deliver calm passages. My points of criticism would be the limited variance in the vocals (which is rather common in these musical territories) and the fact that if you are saturated with this type of metal The Embodiment probably won’t change your mind. Base your decision on that.