Faceless World

Reviewing Udo the Dissident’s third release here… the first album the man produced as a victor from the battle with his former comrades from Accept whose first Udo-less recording “Eat the Heat” had appeared roughly a year earlier, and was a total flop in every respect. The man wasn’t exactly bathing in fortune and glory at the start of the new decade as the old school canons were shaking uncertainly, but I bet he was quite content, or thereabouts, to see his ex-colleagues messing it up beyond repair without his participation.

On the unmitigated minus side, once the battle has been won, there’s no very big reason for the metal stalwart to exert himself any longer, and consequently this opus is his weakest creation from his late-80’s/early-90’s period. It’s still the good old hard’n heavy but the dynamics from the first two has been reduced, the overall delivery nearly hitting the downbeat introspective parametres at times. The backbone of the albums are steady but not overly exuberant heavy rockers (“Heart of Gold”, “Blitz of Lightning”) which early spread the dominant layout, a couple of energetic fast-pacers (“System of Life”, “Can't Get Enough”) pouring vials of life into the proceedings without overdoing it, the title-track providing a not very expected keyboard touch to a pensive semi-balladic main frame. The lead guitar prowess on “Stranger” enlivens the setting big time, with a string of staple metal hymns keeping the heads shake in agreement right after, the instilled vigour mortified with the lyrical poignant ballad “Unspoken Words” and the somewhat lengthy sing-alonger “Future Land”.

In the long run there’s nothing missing from a classic heavy metal album, the keyboard pop-ups the only genuinely debatable ingredient, with the vocals traditionally being one of the biggest assets, the man as passionate and attached as ever, showing his seldom revealed softer side on the mentioned ballad. Still, there’s this sense of nostalgy and melancholy permeating the compositions… could it be cause Udo felt sorry for his Accept comrades for hitting such a low thus laying down the weapons for good? Or he was simply anticipating the fall from grace scheduled for his beloved music, and that his fist-pumping anthems would become a thing of the past before long? The enthusiasm exuded is by no means very big, the man not coming out with all the guns blazing, feeling his way around with a pretty decent but hardly exceptional collection of songs.

One can’t be sure how the next chapter from the Udo saga would have turned out if it wasn’t for the arrival of the indomitable “Painkiller”… the German minstrel produced his own version of Judas’ magnum opus with “Timebomb”, the man vetting all the anger and frustration from the changing of the tides witnessed on the music scene, a fitting closure to the first period of his career. He spent the perfidious mid-90’s with the safer bet, the reunion stint with his old comrades from Accept, but returned with “Solid” in 1997, a very relevant title which also adequately describes the man’s repertoire ever since, solid balls of anthemic heavy rock, rolling authoritatively, all the way to the present day.

While UDO may never contain an album that gives some of Accept's classics a run for their money, Udu's side project has almost always proven to be a gold mine of great traditional metal that's just all around fun and extremely easy to get into. Faceless World comes off as one of UDO's slowest albums especially when compared to their next release, Timebomb. While speedier stuff has always been more my cup of tea, there was just something special about this album. It pulled me in quicker than any other UDO release, the consistency and catchiness is completely through the roof here.

Throughout this album there is some minor use of synths along with the rhythm's / riffs and so forth, it works extremely well and usually manages to add some atmosphere to the music. The production itself is practically flawless and everything is crystal clear, the drums are hardly drowned out and aren't wimpy at all while the guitars tend to stick to a razor sharp style. This tends to make a lot of the solo's here stand out quite a bit and its worth mentioning every single solo on this album is absolutely incredible and compared to say, Judas Priest at the time, this just blows them away. Beyond all this there's the bass that is pretty heavy throughout but seems to lack a little character, it isn't nearly as memorable as the rest of the instruments here. Then of course there's that odd and lovable (or should I say gurgley?) Udo Dirkschneider on vocals. Its hard to say anything about this guy because you're either going to really love him or hate him, but for those who give things a fair chance he could become someone that really grows on you. Its undeniable that his performance is at %110 as always and he really gives this album a lot of its flavor.

Among a lot of the great things about this album, there seems to be two big things that really stand out here: The solo's and the choruses. When the solo's come flying in they usually go for some harmonizing and after that it sometimes turns into a pure shredfest. Some of these solo's here almost sound out of place because of how insanely awesome some of them are. Then there's the choruses that'll stick to your mind after hearing the majority of these songs for the very first time. Is it Udu's majestic attitude? The generic yet ever so catchy lyrics? The uplifting pace of the songs? Who knows, but the fact of the matter is even if you hate catchy sing-along choruses such as these, you just may find yourself singing along with tons of these tracks.

As I stated earlier this album tends to be slower than most of UDO's releases, its mostly made up of mid-paced tracks with a huge melodic focus. The majority of these tracks tend to stand out pretty well and are extremely memorable, while I found only Living on a Frontline and Trip to Nowhere to be the only real lackluster tracks here. UDO nails it with the mid-paced structure and at times I hear a ton of ideas and patterns that would later be repeated in bands such as Gamma Ray, Iron Savior, etc. Fans of traditional metal especially from the German side absolutely cannot miss out on this one and if you're an Accept fan I'd imagine you'd get an enjoyable experience out of this. Highly recommended, Timebomb would take things to a much faster level (the track on here Can't Get Enough is a good example) and is definitely worth hearing after this one as well.