Belligerence - Out:Red (2008)

   Basically there are 3 ways how to play melodic death: 1. To play basically heavy metal with growling vocal style, that lacks all death metal musical features (this is the most common, but unfortunately vocals simply can't determine the style of the music), 2. To play melodic death for real, death metal themes with melodies (the rarest), and 3. To play metal with various influences including the actual modern tendencies and death metal. Belligerence debuted as the third cathegory.
   "Out:Red" sounds like an album that have been incubating since a while, and the musicians tried to do their best to involve all possible aspects of their music that they've found interesting enough to share. Musically the album definitely shows modern tendencies not only in the themes and song structures, but also in the instrumentation. If the listener pays attention well, it's also possible to catch moments that would fit into industrial metal. The returning appearence of keyboards and other options of creating a background atmosphere is common both in modern or progressive metal and even in "death-less melodic death". But unlike the latest cathegory, Belligerence preferred  nearly constant thrash metal basics, that are keep switching into a more melodic direction and also into death metal. The main impression is kind of intense, but sometimes turns a bit melancholic. Agressive growling female vocal is assisting to the diverse musical approach. Not all of their experiments worked out well, like the girly switch in the song "Overfilled" is kind of freaking out after the listener got used to the heavier tone, so it defiinitely wasn't their best idea. Except this and some other smaller occasional mistakes the album counts as a strong and convincing debut. Recommended for music connoisseurs!