I remember picking up Amoral’s debut Wound Creations off the now defunct Rage of Achilles label a few years ago and enjoying the living shit out of it. Amoral were unique among technical death metal acts in the fact they sounded nothing like technical death metal acts: Amoral was a tech death act at best by a technicality (shut up, punsters), and were instead interested more in focusing on riffs with melody and groove that existed in this weird Bermuda Triangle between melodic death metal, Scandinavian death, and a small inkling of death/thrash acts. They straddled the line between melo-death and technical death metal, without ever really conforming to one or the other. And it amazingly worked in their favor.

Three years and two albums later, Amoral still seem to be doing that dance, shaking their ass at the rest of Finnish death metal like a retard with $1000 in quarters at the Dance Dance Revolution kiosk at the arcade. Reptile Ride sees Amoral’s penchant for "not quite tech death, not quite melo-death" metal going strong. Amoral’s guitar work remains tight and capable of complex shredding when needed, but refrains from ever resembling 90% of technical death metal acts’ riffing, only revealing its technical nature in small doses, such as in "Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Fun". Amoral at times pulls back on the reins of its speed, opting for slower, mid-paced songs such as "Few and Far Between" rather than running along at full speed. When it does slow down, there’s an obvious emphasis on melody not unlike early Omnium Gatherum but they never break fully into that emotive style of melodic death metal song writing.

Amoral still refuse to confine themselves to one particular area of death metal, and that’s fine with me. They pull off their death metal hokey-pokey quite well. If you don’t mind goofy melody and hooks in your death metal, with no allegiance to one particular school of song writing, Reptile Ride is worth a look.

Review byNecro-tron