With their first full length the Dutch band DETONATION try to resurrect the golden era of the Gothenburg scene of the beginning of the 90s. I just said “try” because the result doesn’t come up fully convincing. The playing abilities of the four musicians cannot be questioned here, they show a great deal of talent. But the song writing department doesn’t match the musical skills I am sorry to say. The songs are not memorable, and lack the excitement factor that made classics like “The Gallery”, “The Somberlain”, “Lunar Strain” or “Orchid” so enjoyable ten years ago. Yet all the mandatory ingredients necessary to build solid melodic Death Metal are on offer here: the MAIDENesque riffing, the dark and melancholic atmosphere (‘autumnal’ is another word that spread in mind while listening to this kind of music), delicacy mixed with sudden outbursts of aggression. But the magic, this intangible factor needed to catalyse all these elements and fuse them into a harmonious and imagination-striking unity is simply not here. Then, “An Epic Defiance” ends to sound more like the effort of respectful scholars impressed by the knowledge of their mentors than a renewal of a definite genre. The band went as far as to ask Niklas Sundin to draw the artwork for them so the album sounds and looks like a Swedish melodic Death Metal effort of old, but the imitation doesn’t match the original. A good album, that’s all.