A real underground jewel is the second full-length release of this Norwegian outfit. A friend of mine taped me their debut album “In My Dreams… I Am Armageddon”, which was already a quality release, but the follow-up “The Birth” is even better. It’s not that easy to categorize the music of THE EMBRACED, but they surely belong the genre of technical and highly melodic Death Metal. Here and there, e.g. on songs like ‘The Plaque Divine’ or ‘Daughter Of The Lupus Moon’ you can listen to influences of old AT THE GATES (“With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness” period), but this five-piece comes up with a pretty individual sound. Especially the vocals are more Death Metal inspired compared to the overdose of Gothenburg acts. THE EMBRACED also try to include a lot of variation, for example the acoustic track ‘Apart’is pretty folk inspired and also contains some female vocals. All in all a very refreshing album which is recommended to people into both brutality, heaviness and melody.