Euphoreon is a Melodic Death Metal project from New Zealand formed by Matt Summerville and later on joined by Eugen Dodenhoeft (Far Beyond) from Germany. This self-titled is their first full-length.

Matt Summerville released a demo called ‘Before The Blackened Sky’ on his own before the self-titled. Matt Summerville handles the lead guitar, harsh vocals and did most of the songwriting. Eugen Dodenhoeft does Rhythm Guitar, Bass, Clean and Harsh vocals and Engineering. I don’t know who the drummer is but there are real drums and no drum machine which is a good thing.

Euphoreon is a well-crafted product. The production and the instrumentation are good. While they play melodic death metal there are influences from black, power and even folk metal. This gives the needed variation. The harsh vocals are sometimes a little monotonous but the added clean vocals here and there makes that’s it still interesting to listen too.

The overall feeling of the cd is pretty fast but there are also some slower parts. Every part of the cd comes exactly at the right moment. Euphoreon contains 8 songs with not one song shorter than 5 minutes. As I said the structures in the songs are really good.

My favourite track ‘Before The Blackened Sky’ starts with a fast guitar and a keyboard later added halfway after a solo the song slows down. The song builds up again with clean vocals than the harsh vocals take over again. I really like the guitars in this song.

Other highlight is the intro from ‘Eleventh Heaven’ with a keyboard and a nice calming solo after that the song kicks in with pounding drums.

The lyrics on this album are a little vague to me I can’t find any real meaning to them other than that he is dealing with some pain and struggles. This one downside to me the other one is that the songs not stick in your head not even the clean ‘choruses’.

Overall

This is a really solid debut release especially since its free downloadable (link below). The artwork is pretty nice but there are some improvements possible on the side of the vocals and especially the lyrics. I recommend this for fans of In Vain, Far Beyond and melodic death metal in general.

Rating: 7/10

Reviewed by WarriorSam

Tracklist:
1) Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining
2) Before The Blackened Sky
3) Forever Being
4) Eleventh Heaven
5) Where Dead Skies Dwell
6) From The Netherworld
7) Starnight Rider
8 ) Road To Redemption

Euphoreon are:
Matt Summerville (Lead Guitar, Harsh Vocals)
Eugen Dodenhoeft (Rhythm Guitar, Bass, Clean and Harsh vocals, Engineering)

Guest musician(s):
Patrick Stäudle (Session Piano) on ”Euphoreon” album

Weblinks: Official website / Facebook / Bandcamp

Record label: Independent, April 2011

Video (audio) for ‘Road To Redemption’

Video (audio) for ‘Eleventh Heaven’