The debut full length album from Spaniards Death Keepers has been released and it’s… Ok. In my experience, debut albums are often a little shaky, but a good band will find their feet and their own sound and head off into the world. I’m not sure this is happening here just yet.

Let me be clear: these guys do have talent. Individually they play really well, but together they just have small instances of greatness that are ultimately mushed into jarring incoherence. There’s classical scale practice thrown in with solos and rhythm sections that are heavily inspired by (read: almost directly lifted from) great metal bands of the eighties and nineties.

The main problem with that is when I heard sections that reminded me of other bands, I found myself stopping this album to play the bands they were emulating instead. That’s a big problem for Camp DK.

When reviewing an album I try to totally immerse myself in the music, playing it as often as I can for a few days to let it all seep into my head. I found the cacophony of music styles so jarring it kept ripping me out of the moment and I had to put it down and walk away… Multiple times. I was being audibly thrown around the room and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Musically DK seem to be having an identity crisis whilst suffering multiple personality disorders. What is the aim of this album? Where are they heading? Where are they trying to take me? I don’t know and they don’t seem to know either. There’s multiple tempo changes, style changes, vocal changes… And that’s all in one song! There are some fantastic pieces of music in there, but totally disjointed from each other. All the clashing sounds make it all collapse into the background as an irritating wall of noise with occasional snippets of gold.

The vocals are crisp and clear because everything else is turned down. The music is overly muted and while Dey Rus has a pretty good voice, the volume shift every time he opens his mouth is just annoying. It’s hard to really break down the songs individually as they’re all the same in their approach: random. One exception is the last track, Smooth Hit Love. Smooth in comparison to the rest of the album, sadly not a hit and there’s not much love for it. It’s the ballad we never asked for and I doubt they will get any live requests for it.

All in all I’m disappointed with this one, but you never know. If Death Keepers survive this album they might regroup and smash out a great second album. It’s been done before.

Rock the World is out now on Fighter Records