Degial - Death's Striking Wings (2012)

   Degial's full-lenght debut wasn't exactly what could be expected at first from a Swedish death metal album. At one hand their music couldn't be sorted to the countless others that are strictly following the traditional sound and song structure of their own old school scene. 
   But while listening, it gets clear, that by avoiding one generic direction, they fell into another one. Their music is way more complex than ordinary Swedish death, frequently assisted by fast, and short guitar leads, that are usually ending up into great solo themes. The main themes are diverse and also influenced by heavy, speed and thrash metal. This kind of complexity isn't too far from technical ambitions, and embedded into softer sound, in total "Death's Striking Wings" strongly reminds to early Morbid Angel. If it's about the Swedish scene, this technically more creative and lighter approach is related to bands like Dismember or Dissection. In the early '90s this style also served as a first push from extreme metal to progression, but Degial preferred to not cross that line, and their main concept still followed the tradicional direction. From another perspective the album has no lack of intensity at all, but it lacks the sound of death metal, and by it's mixed and technically repetitive themes it doesn't necessarily sound like a death metal album. With less frequent speed-ups it couldn't be called like that either. In fact this could have been advantageous for the band, partly because they are kind of outsanding not only from the Swedish scene, but also from the main death metal scene in general. And by playing death metal that isn't mainly for death metal fans might make their music compatible with wider audiences.