J-Man
Deadend In Venice is a new melodic death metal act from Germany that takes a liking to the 'beauty and the beast' vocal style on this debut. Featuring both a male growler and a female clean singer, See You on the Ground can definitely be an interesting listen for those who enjoy this style of death metal, as well as fans of decidedly-modern sounding melodic extreme metal. Deadend In Venice is slightly different from your average 'beauty and the beast' act, though, since their sound is entirely void of symphonic and gothic influences, and instead draws from both melodic death metal and metalcore.
While this is an interesting (albeit overdone) idea, See You on the Ground is a pretty generic and, frankly, unremarkable effort. The foundation for most of the songs is standard melodeath riffs with a variety of metalcore-styled growls and clean female singing. Not the most interesting style (in my opinion) to begin with, but the compositions lack enough memorability to make this even a casually enjoyable listen. The vocals border on tedious at times, and songs like "Dirty Little Princess" make me want to reach for the skip-button. There are some good tunes here, but they still hardly reach above the 'average' mark.
See You on the Ground is a pretty dull debut from Deadend In Venice, and I can really only recommend it to melodic death metal enthusiasts. The music is just too uninspired and formulaic to really make my blood boil. Still, the production and musicianship are both professional, so 2.5 stars would probably be fair in this case. Deadend In Venice will need to create something more memorable next time around to really grab my attention.