Deadly Sins

Seven Witches had never made a really great album, nor a bad album either, before 2005. Surely some really good tunes here and there, but the albums were a bit too inconsistent. No album ever reached above 85/100 in my book, even if the “Passage To The Other Side”-album is a great one and almost reaching over that. But with the vocalist change, James Rivera to Alan Tecchio things changed, quite badly. Because with the release of “Amped” something negative happened with the band. They had lost their classical “american heavy metal”-touch in their music and went towards something in a more modern direction.

What they certainly have done with “Deadly Sins” is to develop that sound even more, and towards something more rocky, modern sound. And in my ears it doesn’t work out at all.

The music that is nailed on “Deadly Sins” just feels like a big pile of paste. The music doesn’t have any interesting themes in them or anything, they’re just chugging on and on. I can feel the songwriting is very sloppy, tiresome riffing, and also feels a bit stressed and some songs sounds awfully similar with each other. We get some great Jack Frost-solos on the album (the one on “Worship” is excellent), but it happens way too little. When listening, the only song that has some old Seven Witches blood in it is “Wealth”, and that is pretty much just because of the intro/main riff of the song. But gets pretty much ruined with Tecchio’s vocals, that sounds really strained and ‘over the top’. Which is a general feeling over the whole album, he seems to grab on too hard on nearly all songs, and it doesn’t fit. The only song where I think he does a great performance is on “Man of the millennium”. A ballad, where he sings calmly and controlled. He should have sung like that, or at least more variated through the rest too. The production of the album sounds very plastic and how should I say...computerised? Which maybe brings some certain percent to the “modern”-feeling I mentioned.

So what we have here is a real downfall. This is a Seven Witches that have headed in a totally wrong direction. An album that misses variation and just....songs, that catch your interest. Guitarist/bandleader Jack Frost now needs to steer his ship back to the ground they belong with the next album, or at least I will loose the faith in this band. I mean, they can’t even make justice to their heavy song “The Answer” from 2000’s “City Of Lost Souls”. Is it made by the same band, really, i’ve wondered to myself...and then it’s bad.

There is not much good to find on here, so I will of coursely not recommend this album to anybody. Instead, you can take a look at their albums before “Amped”. That’s Seven Witches.

Although Jack Frost’s formula for writing songs for this project has always been formulaic, there has been a general tendency away from the traditional power metal format that he started with ever since “Xiled to Infinity and One”. Now there has been some good and bad changes made on every subsequent album, but the presence of modern rock has been something that has blighted an otherwise decent sound, and it shows in its most blatant form on this album.

Everyone who lives for thrash metal obviously is aware of the loathsome garbage that is half-thrash/groove metal, but fewer people realize that traditional speed metal is also subject to a similar malformation of style. Mostly power metal bands tend to get either too progressive or too rock oriented, or both in the case of Blind Guardian’s “A Twist in the Myth”. But in the case of “Deadly Sins”, the changes are something akin to a combination of what happened to Pantera in the early 1990s and to Ozzy in the mid-90s.

The best songs on here are the ones that stick closer to the original power metal style that was on this band’s first 2 albums, resulting in something that listens pretty close to “Cowboys from Hell”. The title track and “Science” both display this quite well, although hints of “Vulgar Display of Power” also come up in the slower sections, particularly in Frost’s now looser riff work. “Wealth” actually reaches back completely to the band’s original speed metal roots, throwing out some wicked galloping riff goodness and a slightly less grunt oriented vocal character.

There are naturally other examples of positive influences from the band’s earlier days, but there is just enough bad down tempo groove metal on here to drag the listen of the entire album down significantly. Somewhere along the line Jack Frost decided that it was a good idea to sludge up his guitar sound, tune down too far, and then have a little to much fun with the harmonic screams that are indicative of Zakk Wylde’s sound on “Ozzmosis”. If you doubt this, listen to “Commerce” and “Worship”, you’ll be treated to some of the most ridiculously gratuitous groove metal garbage.

For would be buyers of Seven Witch’s back catalog, you would be better served checking out “City of Lost Souls” or “Year of the Witch. Hell, even the moderately good “Xiled to Infinity and One” tops this, and that is not saying a whole lot. If you’re into half-thrash/groove metal, don’t buy it either; instead, develop better taste in music and understand that groove metal is about as metal as putting on a backwards baseball cap, acting like you’re some sort of gangsta rapper from the suburbs, and telling everyone it’s either my way or the highway.