With musical threads running all over the metal world, the Absence blend chugging death metal with European influences on their third album, Enemy Unbound.

Like their past albums, driving death and thrash metal make up the engine that powers the album, giving the band a sound that thunders forward while leaving plenty of room for more melodic flourishes to add depth to the sound, adding a more epic, Scandinavian feeling to the album.

While the Absence are equally adept at both the heavy and melodic aspects of the songs, the two elements have a tendency to work against one another, not necessarily clashing, but rather tending to cancel each other out, leaving things feeling watered down.

By trying to go in too many directions at once, Enemy Unbound ends up sounding increasingly generic.

This doesn’t mean the album is a lost cause, and the Absence deliver their fair share of sweeping guitar acrobatics and big riffs that will give old fans enough to thrash out to, but it’s one that doesn’t really offer a lot to separate itself from the rest of the pack.