Established in 1996, Escutcheon hails from the Eastern part of the Netherlands and play melodic, brutal death-metal. Highly inspired by the 90’s Göthenborg style of death-metal such as At The Gates, Eucharist and older In Flames. In 1997 they released their first self released demo, which was followed by a second demo in 1998. Their first self released full length album was released in 2001. This record gained a lot of interest from magazines and bookers. They played a lot of shows and did some small tours. In 2005, all went quiet and activities seized. In 2007 Escutcheon reformed and they wrote the songs for this album Battle Order. The album was recently released by the Dutch label Deity Down Records.

It’s always good to hear that there are still some Dutch bands left, that want to play melodic Swedish styled death-metal. After last year's reunion of At The Gates, that showed the world how it’s done properly, it’s good to see that our own country has bands like that as well. First of all, I have to give my compliments to the great futuristic artwork. Looking at the lyrics and artwork concept, this band is definitely inspired by aliens, sci-fi kind of stuff. In the vein of their bigger Swedish brothers Hypocrisy.

The album opens with an eerie sounding space-ship intro. It could have easily been a soundtrack for a horror/science fiction movie. After the intro the band bursts into a fast blastbeat song, which straight away has resemblances with the older At The Gates stuff. The production of this album is superb, so the songs have a lot of power and melody in them. The fourth song is one of the highlights of this album. It’s a really intense headbanger song with a killer riff. It reminds me a lot of the stuff of Hypocrisy in their The Fourth Dimension era. Awesome song!

Escutcheon knows what they are doing and they can easily compete with their foreign competitors. Like to see how this bands evolves in the future. Check this band out if you are into the Göthenborg sound and bands like Hypocrisy.