Scarpoint

While Sweden’s main exports are said to be chemicals, motor vehicles and petroleum products, it seems fairly obvious to anyone who follows aggressive music that "metal bands” should be up there with the rest of the country’s gross national product. The Silence We Deserve was produced by Daniel Bergstrand (In Flames, Meshuggah), which makes perfect sense upon listening to it. I could have easily been duped into thinking I was hearing Come Clarity if my attention to detail was that of Chief Wiggum. The moniker Scrapoint really just comes across as a tough guy name that has little meaning behind it, kind of like, hmm, In Flames... And the artwork is boring and done to death, kind of like the name Scarpoint. Their debut LP certainly doesn’t attempt anything outside the box. What it does deliver is a familiar style of Gothenburg metal that relies heavily on driving bass drum rhythms, hard vocal screams and guitar work that chugs, rips, tears and squeals. The Silence We Deserve isn’t a bad album by any measure of metal music, it just doesn’t have anything that makes it stand out. That’s why bands rely on their names to get people’s attention, one would assume.