Emergency Gate is not a band I'm familiar with, but the German Wiki tells me they've been around for fifteen years in various forms. They started off as power metal before turning toward a more straightforward hard rock sound for their first full-length, and over the last two have turned more toward melodic death. It's an interesting progression, and there's not really anything left over of the power metal aspects unless you consider the keyboard and electronic flourishes that come with the melodic death metal territory.

The album storms out of the gate with "Alternative Dead End," which sits comfortably in the melodic death spectrum alongside the likes of Soilwork, In Flames, and Scar Symmetry. They change things up a bit toward the end of that song with a more metalcore-styled breakdown. "Dark Side Of The Sun" would have fit in great with Colony-era In Flames. Although there aren't any real surprises, the content does change up a bit over the course of the album. Songs like "Story Of A Psychopath" introduce a middle-ground voice between the cleaner melodic vocals and the full-on growls that finds them sounding a bit like Loch Vostok; the same song also finds them pulling in some more hardcore influences with gang shouts. The bridge of "An End To The Age Of Man" goes straight into electronic dance territory. The electronic and industrial influences reappear "This Time," with some D&B styling to the verse riff before the big melodic chorus.

It would be easy to criticize the album for being "safe," for not really taking any big strides or trying to take the genre in new directions. On the other hand, that would miss the point. Instead, Emergency Gate just serves up one slick slab of melodic death metal done well. They never really change up the formula much, never straying very far or letting up from how they start the album, but when it's done this well, that's fine by me.