### Despite: Clenched

#### 11/04/11 || revenant

OK folks today I’m going to give a quick workshop on marketing basics, and what I want to discuss is USPs or Unique Selling Propositions. Now basically a USP is a way to differentiate your product from an overcrowded marketplace and using that point of difference to your advantage. Once you have figured out what your USP is, it’s just a matter of putting the right marketing together to make the sell. Now we all know that metal is getting overcrowded with bands all competing for your hard earned cash, yeah? So the example we’re looking at today is the new Despite album “Clenched”.

So first up, who are Despite and what do they do? Well, these guys are a death metal band hailing from Gothenburg. They take the traditional melodic death sound from that region and give it a harsher and more aggressive tone. Once upon a time that might have been unique, but now the whole Gothenburg sound has been done to death by local and international copycats. So instead Despite have tried to create something new in the production of their sound, which they have labelled “raw metal”. BAM, there’s your USP. But what exactly is raw metal?

Well, to explain this I’ll quote the material that comes with this release:

“Recorded with equipment from the sixties and the seventies means no sampled or trigged drums, no computer editing, no over-produced polished sound. Only raw music performed for real.”

So there you have it, raw means basically produced, but worded correctly makes a fantastic USP.

Which brings me to the review part of this article and the part where I pull this USP apart. I don’t like the sound. That’s right, DUN DUN DUN, I find the sound entirely dull. The music itself is pretty decent, and I really like the track “All the eights”, but the sound is just, well, dull. I hate to put it all down to the sound because the riffing can be a little generic at times, but really it’s the sound that puts me off. Maybe I like my little artificial world with overproduced and overpolished production. I can live with that. So be it.

It is unfortunate I couldn’t enjoy this album more. The vocals are guttural and create a real impact. The playing is tight and the music aggressive. The epic closer creates a great atmosphere. Maybe it’s just me, but the sound and the at times generic riffing just made this a boring album for me. Even if I put the sound aside for a moment (because I know there are readers who will definitely dig the under-produced sound), I can’t say this is a great album, and at best this album would be worthy of a 7. But for me, I have to drop this album back to….

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Dozer / Rough Trade
- Website: Despite MySpace
- Band
- Alex Losbäck: vocals
- Timmy Leng: guitars
- Jonatan “Oktaven” Larsson: guitars
- Mathias “Matte D” Dagerhed: bass
- Oskar Nilsson: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Scars
- 02. Commander of Hate
- 03. Crushing the World
- 04. All the eights
- 05. …of the End
- 06. Bruised Machines
- 07. God of Flies
- 08. Clenched
- 09. Creed of Sin
- 10. The Cause and Solution