THE HARVEST WOMBS

"The Harvest Wombs" is the debut full-length studio album by US, San Francisco based technical death metal/deathcore act Fallujah. The album was released through Unique Leader Records in November 2011. Fallujah was formed in 2007 and released a couple of demos and the "Leper Colony (2009)" EP before signing to Unique Leader Records for the release of "The Harvest Wombs".

The band play a sci-fi themed type of technical death metal/deathcore. The deep growling vocals are at times paired with higher pitched raspy ones. The vocals are a bit generic to my ears or if I play nice I´d say they are pretty standard for the genre. They get the job done but not much more than that. The music alternates between brutal technical death metal parts and blasting (for the most part) atmospheric parts. The musicianship is on a very high level and I´m especially impressed by the well played semi- jazzy guitar soli, that somewhat remind me of Cynic´s ditto, and also the innovative technical drumming. Fallujah are generally much more brutal then an act like Cynic and it´s more contemporary artists like Vale of Pnath, Obscura, Augury and Beyond Creation that come to mind, while listening to "The Harvest Wombs".

The material on the 10 track, 44:05 minutes long album is of high quality all the way through the playing time. "The Harvest Wombs" is in addition to the "regular" technical death metal/deathcore tracks, spiced up with two rather intriguing instrumentals in "The Flame Surreal" and "The Harvest Wombs", which are both great for the variation of the album.

The sound production is clear and powerful, which suits the material well. The drums might be a bit too high in the mix and there´s little here that you can call organic, but other than that "The Harvest Wombs" is a very well produced album, and upon conclusion it´s certainly a promising debut album. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.