Now that the nu-metal and metalcore idioms are starting to look threadbare, wannabe metallers all over the US are busily dusting off their old thrash and death CDs, as well as tapping into a bit of the Gothenberg vibe to find a way out of this dead end. Often, the result winds up sounding about as uninspiring and stale as you’d expect, as with former Coal Chamber mallgoth Dez Fafara’s new band, DevilDriver, reviewed elsewhere on this site by some bald bloke. Indiana-based Year Of Desolation seem to be a shade better, but just a shade.

Their second, self-titled album has more of the melodic metalcore touch than I can really bring myself to appreciate, but the songs are loud, tight and riffy, and they have some promising moments of thrash/death inspired intensity.. There are some satisfactorily pumelling songs like ‘The Economy Of Excess’ which has an almost Kreator-like vibe at moments, or 'Running The Gauntlet' and 'Forged In The Flames Of Malcontent', but elsewhere melodic and rhythmic cliches, apparently harvested from the last 2 decades or so of the more popular metal material, or simply an insufficient follow-through on a good opening deaden the impact of their better ideas.

Year Of Desolation have a sufficiently competent and engaged line up, but they seem incapable of writing a really fresh, original melody or building on their more inspired moments with sufficient confidence, falling back on cliches borrowed from anywhere from the Bay Area or Florida to Sweden instead of venturing into new territory. They need to work on their arrangements and step outside the box-of-influences approach if they are to be a real contender outside the quality-challenged mainstream US metal market.

Label: Prosthetic Records

Year of Release: 2007