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I suppose it was inevitable that the goth metal "add a hot chick" ethic would work its way into other genres. 6th Awakening are a Swedish band that is combining a kind of groovy Death Metal with a female singer who alternately sings and growls - I'm not sure, I can't really tell if she is doing the growling or if that's the backing singer.

I'm not opposed to the idea in principle, and this album has flashes of excitement, but it is telling that this band sounds best when they are most imitative of Arch Enemy. Singer Lovisa Lundmark has a nice clean voice that gets underused. The harsh vocals on here are (I think) done by guitarist Robert Arnlund, and they need some work. When the band speeds up they sound better, but when they are slower the growls sound really forced. Frankly the combination of the Death-style riffs with the clean singing sounds more arresting and different.

Having a female vocalist in an 'extreme' band is still a kind of novelty these days, and I think 6th Awakening are leaning too much on that, as their compositions are not strong enough to justify how long they go on. The songwriting is the sort where by two minutes in you have heard everything, but they are going to repeat it a bunch more times anyway. The riffs are far too groovy, and the band doesn't seem to trust the music to carry them, relying on vocal gimmicks.

Honestly, I think this band should ditch the harsh vocals altogether, because the music sounds much stronger and more individual when they let Lundmark stretch out and sing. Otherwise, they sound like a second-rate Arch Enemy imitation.