Dine In Hell- ‘Orphans’ (20/10/2011- Indelirium Records)

       Dine In Hell, from Ravenna, Italy are a hardcore metal band who have shared the stage with the likes of This Is Hell, Devil Sold His Soul and For The Fallen Dreams. They were pretty well known in their country of origin and after a year’s worth of work, they are set to release ‘Orphans’, which features a guestspot from Legend’s Chad Ruhlig, all over the world. The band released their first EP ‘Bites Of Time’ in 2009, played at Fuelfest in 2010, as well as three European tours in the last two years.

Dine In Hell

     ‘Orphans’ opens with ‘Into The Misery’, which is a great song title to open with. It builds up into rapacious drumming and classic metal guitaring. Gritty gang vocals and an Avenged Sevenfold drenched breakdown make them quite a commercial and conventional metal band. However, traditional metal music can sculpt lyrics that are difficult to understand, which true of Dine In Hell, but this fact makes the gang vocals even more effective. ‘The Forgotten’ is unfortunately very similar in sound to ‘Into The Misery’, although they utilise a call and response format with melodic singing and screamo vocals, ‘you won’t be a star...’. This suggests that Dine In Hell are reaching after a particular fresh and unique sound, but have failed to do so.

     ‘The Forgotten’ ferociously and seamlessly combines with ‘Echo’ featuring Chad Ruhlig, proving that the band are relentless with their interwoven gang vocals, which do almost nothing to enhance their tracks. Yet, musically, their melodic undertones give them the potential to appeal to a wider audience. However violently sounding they may be, Dine In Hell fail to excite, and no matter how heavy the guitaring or drumming, they are lyrically and emotionally limp. Fourth track ‘The Biggest Infection’ conveys more gothic sensibilities along with a slight variation in tempo in a seemingly desperate attempt to create some differentiation. 


       An acoustic, welcomed addition to ‘Orphans’ is ‘Accept The Good’ which simply shows that Dine In Hell are not free from all understandable sentiment. It is a respectable rest for the ears which nicely parts the record into two obvious halves, acting as an interval. It has the lyric free lingering effect of any decent movie soundtrack, until it once again, cascades into a monstrous metal ‘melody’. ‘Circle of Crypts’ is full of twisted tension, making it sound as if it has no rhythm whatsoever.

'Orphans': Album Artwork

     In terms of songwriting, Dine In Hell have followed practically the same format for every track; a build up into a breakdown, which is also true of ‘Until N.O’ and ‘Embrace Your Existence’, which could easily be mistaken for one another. The only key difference between them and penultimate track ‘Siberia’ is the change is tempo. One monotonous melody after another brings ‘Orphans’ to a relatively gentle, but monotone close with title track ‘Orphans.’ It is by the far the best written and produced song from the album.

     Although there are some stand out seconds of some sort of prospective, anyone who looks for feeling in their heart of in fact, ears from the music they listen to, would rather Dine In Hell than listen to this record.


1/5