Frailty

With their melodically spiced death metal onslaught, Sweden's the Duskfall harken back to the mid-'90s, when champions of the Gothenburg scene like At the Gates and In Flames were establishing the template carefully reproduced by 2002's Frailty. In other words, there's virtually nothing truly original on hand here, but that's not to say that Duskfall don't deliver their wares with plenty of confidence and chops. In fact, outstanding cuts such as "Age of Errors," "Poison the Waters," and "Just Follow" qualify among the best melodic death metal currently issuing from Scandinavia. The formula does start to wear a bit thin towards the album's second half, but only obsessive fans already familiar with the band's countless musical predecessors are likely to mind. Actually, maybe the strangest thing about Frailty is the fact that all the guitar solos were performed by a non-band member, guest player Magnus Olsson, whose very melodic, almost power metal-inspired leads provide a unique twist to the otherwise Gothenburg-dominated mayhem captured here.