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Well this is just sweet, quality melodic death metal that doesn't reek of Gothenburg. Canopy takes the approach of bands such as Insomnium and Be'Lakor and presents us with some cool, well thought out and well played melodic death metal. One thing for sure is that Canopy doesn't forget that the genre is meant to be, you know, aggressive.

The album opens up with the lengthy title track, and while it admittedly takes a while to get going, once it does it's pretty damn cool. The riffs are interesting and the vocals are a solid growl, with plenty of bite. Things get much better when "A Storm Within a Storm" kicks off, with its excellent tremolo riff sections as well as the cool counterpart guitar lines interspersed throughout the verses, right out of the Insomnium handbook, and without a doubt one of the band's finest numbers.

With such a short run time there is little room to fumble, and I would say with the exception of the opener taking a little too long to get going, Canopy stray from fumbling and are really on the money throughout the rest of Menhir. There is a lot of variation in the tracks, and there's always a nice idea around the corner. The melodies are well conceived, and we see this displayed very well in the dirge of the album's closer, "Zenith".

I'm really quite impressed with this effort from Canopy and they prove that there is still room for new and exciting music in a genre most have deemed stale. They avoid the pitfalls of their peers and know their boundaries. You won't get anything in the way of an unwarranted jaunt through metalcore territory here. Just quality melodic death metal all the way.