On their third album, The Blood Seed, Florida's Absolon combines a melodic, hard-rocking brand of metal with some tasteful lead work in a European-flavored brew. The songwriting is solid and entertaining without producing a real killer track, so The Blood Seed doesn't get under your skin right off the bat. More memorable are the vocals, which have a nasal quality that in the wrong setting might not work but here are distinctive in a good way and I like how they fit with the music, especially on the title track. If hard rocking metal in the style of The Michael Schenker Group and Black Majesty has a place in your mix, give The Blood Seed a spin.