Crime Syndicate

Now this is how you make a second album; take everything you did on the debut, strengthen all the best qualities about it and then release the record with the best packaging you can conceive. 2003's Crime Syndicate satisfies as an appropriate sequel to 2001's Sandstorm more than three times over. Everything I liked about Sandstorm is executed slightly better here, and the small pet peeves I had with that album seem to either be slightly improved upon or totally nonexistent.

Behold the second full-length effort by Swedish brutal death metal trio Soils of Fate, where everything done right is so right. Like Sandstorm, this album too opens up with a absolute banger ― "Killaz Beware" is, no cap, one of the most memorable death metal songs of all time, comparable to the likes of "Hammer Smashed Face" and "Eaten". Now before that pisses off any longtime fans Cannibal Corpse or Bloodbath, let me clarify that I said "memorable" as in the song can be easily remembered and recounted in one's own head just as easily as the aforementioned songs can. I did not say anything to the liking of "famous" nor "renown" as I am completely well-aware how underrated/overlooked Soils of Fate as a band is. But I will say fame means nothing when you're writing songs that have this much catchiness in your music. Just listen to that goddamn solo at 2:23 followed by that massive breakdown at 2:40 and try telling me that isn't the greatest musical moment you ever heard.

Compared to the debut, the gangsta rap-influence seems to be even more prominent this time around. Crime Syndicate features full lines of ebonics and slang appearing in lyrics and some of the song titles. Considering that I'm a huge fan of earlier harder styles of hip hop including Three 6 Mafia and Gravediggaz, this gives me nothing to complain about, but rather a lot more to love. It's worth noting that this album comes from a time when being a fan of both genres was less common than it was now, and effectively gives Soils of Fate a bold edge / feeling of originality. Like the previous record, the composing dream team still includes Magnus Lindvall on guitar and Henrik Crantz on vocals and bass, but the drummer this time is not only different, but he also isn't even a Swede. American skinsman Kevin Talley performs all the drumwork this time, who is perhaps best known for his time in Dying Fetus, Dååth, Chimaira and more. Looking at the guy's humongous résumé, it seems that he does session drums very often. Now this has me wonder how often session musicians travel for their work, and I also wonder what the phonecall or email that convinced him to get him on a flight to Stockholm to record drums for this album probably sounded or looked like back in 2002.

Despite the drummer change, there isn't a huge difference between the overall material or performance, so I cannot thoroughly comment on too much because I'd just be repeating myself. If you want view my thoughts about the band's style/writing and sound, you can view that in my Sandstorm review. However I was not wrong in my assessment earlier where I clarified that this album has the lot of those elements done even better here, so instead of talking about the music again, I will focus on where the band improves everything that they already did prior. Let's start with the production; wider mix, the low end is even lower and just overall sounds good. The band has never sounded bad, but this is a great sounding album period. I should also mention that drum's snare sample this time around is absolutely loads better than the one used previously. It just sounds more natural, and as such it eliminates that annoying TAH-TAH-TAH-TAH-TAH sound that happened whenever the band used blasts on Sandstorm.

Guitar solos still appear plentiful here just as they did last time, and the vocals are still absolute beasty bark-gutturals performed by vocalist/bassist Henrik Crantz. Also while speaking of the vocals, did I mention that Ruben Rosas of Devourment fame features twice on the album? And it's the absolute dopest thing. First feature is on the song "Vs." and his second appearance is on "Murder Inc.". I personally much prefer the contribution he did to the latter, because in my view he totally contributes something special to the song in a way that the band couldn't provide on their own. When he comes in, you instantly recognize his monstrous voice when placed in between Crantz' bellows. "Murder Inc." is a short song, so the vocals just sort of dual-off between the two and it's so catchy, but on "Vs." he just feels more of like an afterthought since his famous gutturals are just sort of shoved in during the last 28 seconds. So yeah, neither songs are bad, I just like what he did "Murder Inc." relatively more.

Before wrapping this up, I should touch on two more things. For one, there's a re-recording of the song "Flowing Under Skin", the OG version of which appears on the band's 1998 demo tape Blood Serology. It's actually not bad, which is surprising coming from someone who usually thinks death metal demo versions always rule above their album re-recordings. It's a tad more cleaned up (as to be expected for a album version) but I of course still prefer the demo tape drums over these sample-replaced drums any day. Secondly, the cover of the Suffocation song "Devoid of Truth" serves as the record's final track, and personally while I do like Suffocation, I don't consider myself a major fan. Nevertheless I was already familiar with the song from its inclusion on their Despise the Sun EP which I think was one of my first introductions to Suffocation more than a decade ago, so I was able to easily recognize these riffs and the differences where the SoF flavoring was added. Makes the song sound a lot more thuglike by comparison, plus the awesome bass lines put through this album's chunky production makes it worthwhile. I still ultimately prefer Suffocation's original though―I never really like covers more than the originals so that's to be expected.

If I didn't already say it enough times before, Crime Syndicate is basically Sandstorm but on steroids. The formula is essentially the same, but better in almost every way. Sure there's some minor things here and there such as the fact that the album still doesn't manage to break the 30 minute mark, but at least it's longer than the previous record (not including that filler crap that it has). I praise this so highly mostly because when I see sophomore albums, I think of sequels and when I think of sequels, I naturally have this expectation that the product's goal should be to reach higher than what they did on the first piece of media. So many movies, video games and the like always tend to fail to capture this spirit, and instead just release half-assed sequels merely to cash in on the success of whatever they did on the first release. But then you have the uncommon cases where #2 was better than the original. This album just happens to be a Terminator 2.

―I'll be back.