Released last fall in Europe, the second album from Sweden’s Marionette continues the trend of the best traditional styled melodic death metal act you’ve never heard, because of how they look (a flamboyant, heavily made up and costumed Japanese visual kei look).

While most of you melo-death fans are probably checking out the new Dark Tranquillity, I suggest you give Enemies a listen as I think many of you will be pleasantly surprised. Culling from the classic Gothenburg (where the band actually hail from) style as opposed to the Sonic Syndicate style of more poppy commercial/metalcore-ish melodic death metal, Enemies is razor sharp and chock full of killer riffs and songs that the genre has been missing for many years.

Even with the keyboard tinkling scattered through out the songs, each of the 12 tracks (the interlude “The Slaughter” doesn’t really count) rips and gallops with a purpose and is free from clean vocals (“Hatelust” has some distant layered singing, but that’s it) or sappy ballads as the likes of the vicious “The Swine,"  “Anthropomorphism,” crunchy “Unman” blaze along with a sense of melodic aggression and seething rasped vocals culled straight from the early 90's but dressed up in a modern polish of a Fredrik Nordström mix and master (though he actual production was handled by two-time Swedish Grammy award-winning producer and songwriter Åke Parmerud). Standouts have to be the trio of the mid paced epic “The Lie” (which has a mid section that’s almost a ballad) with its cool synths and “Your Hands” which blazes with a melodic intensity I have not heard in a while. Plus, the section from about 2:20 to 3:20 is pretty spectacular. Then “Creatures” blends a furious assault with sudden, delicate injections perfectly.

Granted, by the time “Through Veils,” “Their Knives” and “The Truth” roll by you’ve pretty much heard everything Enemies has to offer, but  like Spite before it, it doesn’t stop the album from being a high octane injection into the melodic death metal genre.