It is not really surprising that I've never come across the Death Metal outfit Aeon before, seeing as this Swedish quintet has only been around for the last eight years and has a very limited amount of releases in their luggage. What I find once again quite interesting, though, is to see another bunch of Scandinavian extreme metal musicians turning their backs on their rich musical heritage and instead investing in a sound and style that is more typical of the Death Metal scene whose base is on the other side of the Atlantic.

The music of Aeon is labelled as Extreme Technical Death Metal and even though I agree completely with the 'extreme' part of that description I believe that the use of the word 'technical' is both inaccurate and misleading in describing "Rise To Dominate", the band's debut release with Metal Blade records. Why? Simply because one may easily end up expecting to come across a band whose style would be close to that of Technical Death Metal giants such as Death or Pestilence, which is not really the case, as Aeon look more towards bands as Deicide and Cannibal Corpse for their musical guidance, believe it or not, allowing much less room in their compositions for any welcoming melodies than their heroes.

The result of this strategy is clearly audible in the opening track of this album entitled "Helel Ben-Shachar" - a three an a half minute composition which is based on various hyperfast guitar riffs and equally intense drum themes that somehow managed not to make any great impression on me. The feeling I got from listening to this track and the following two compositions, namely "Spreading Their Disease" and "Living Sin" was that they were products of a band that is trying to create technically demanding compositions but whose musical abilities have not yet evolved to the stage that will enable them to do so successfully.

The first song that somehow managed to catch my attention was "Hate Them", due to the few thrash elements on its main riff and the interesting Slayeric solo that was on offer there, but this same recipe seems to have worked much better on "Caressed By The Holy Man" - a fast paced but quite rhythmical composition whose solid structure made it by far the most attractive composition of this album. The two other songs that made some impression on me were "You Pray To Nothing" and "Godless" - the former being a slow rhythmical composition in the vein of Morbid Angel but less experimental in nature and the latter a song that features an interesting distorted vocal performance by the band's mainman Tommy Dahlstrom.

If you are a fan of Extreme Death Metal you will probably find "Rise To Dominate" a very interesting release, yet I believe that even such a limiting genre allows some room for innovation and personal input that the members of Aeon failed to display. A good album should command your attention from the very first spin - something that never really happened in my case and with that in mind I really cannot justify any other rating than this.

**½

Review by John Stefanis