The Few Against Many are one of those Scandinavian side projects -- in this case helmed by former
Scar Symmetry vocalist Christian Älvestam -- whose intra-personnel bloodlines are so convoluted that making sense of what part each plays in the eventual new musical sum is a largely fruitless and unquestionably exhausting proposition. They play death metal, OK? And their 2009 debut clarifies this position as particularly aggressive and frenetic death metal (lots of blastbeats), either streaked with scattershot symphonic embellishments (opener "Hädanfärd" and the title track) or densely integrated orchestrations and synthesizers (as in the highlights "Bränd Mark" and "Skapelsens Sorti"). Also, with the exception of the tracks "Abider" and "One with the Shadow," which received lyric contributions from
Katatonia's Jonas Renske and
Dark Tranquillity's Mikael Stanne, respectively, the remaining cuts were all penned in Swedish by Älvestam, who notably stays clear of his accomplished clean singing voice and goes strictly Cookie Monster throughout. Problem is, between the synthetic, rather cheap-sounding nature of those aforementioned symphonics and the limited amount of material on hand -- just eight songs lasting 36 minutes -- one doesn't feel very confident about Älvestam's long-term commitment to the Few Against Many, and that may bode better for single downloads than album sales in the eyes of consumers. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia