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Germany's underground Death Metal scene has been raising its ugly-yet-beautiful head pretty intensively for the last 3-5 years and has produced some great and noteworthy new bands. The list of new German Death Metal bands is endless so let's skip the senseless name-dropping part of this review, shall we?

Shattered, from Würzburg, has not taken the easiest road to success.They play very complex, multi-layered and progressive Death Metal (e.g. Obscura, Necrophagist and such) on their debut album New Atlantis that offers quite a journey highlighted by professional, modern Death Metal with some Black Metal overtones. On rare occasions you can hear some amazingly accurate and skillfully composed technical and progressive Death Metal. One of the great things about New Atlantis is the listener can always uncover new layers you don't necessarily pick up during the first 2-3 listens. There always seems to be new and exciting discoveries to be made whenever spinning this disc. A varied vocal approach plays an important role within Shattered's dynamic and striking performance. Michael Bachmann (on lead vocals) and Johannes Laudenbach (on backing vocals) have created an interesting vocal combination for this record; everything from deep death grunts to Shagrath-inspired (Dimmu Borgir) wicked Black Metal snarls can be heard on New Atlantis. This brings more depth and variety to Shattered's already breath-taking musical performance on their debut. I also like the way they have allowed Julian Welsch's bass to take such a strong role. The listener is blessed to hear some true bass wanking and he definitely proves his skills as a true master of his instrument.

Shattered are still looking for a label to officially release New Atlantis. My bet is there will be a few takers who will want to work with this new and very promising German Death Metal act today and in the future as well. Time will certainly tell...