Natural Born Chaos

By 2002, the cat was completely out of the bag on the trend that At the Gates had started with their seismic release of Slaughter of the Soul seven years prior. With Metallica paving the way for thrash and heavy metal to go mainstream, there was now an avenue for death metal aesthetics to seep into pop culture in a way that simply wasn’t possible during Morbid Angel’s or Cannibal Corpse’s prime. Bands like In Flames, Amon Amarth, and of course Soilwork began to capitalize. But should they be penalized for the obvious career decision?

The answer is…. Maybe, but nobody should act like they wouldn’t do the same. And thankfully, Soilwork was able to stave off submitting completely to the radio rock at least until the late ‘00s. Natural Born Chaos is still an album of colorful guitar solos, transient but inspired heavy riffing, and catchy (if not quite death metal) vocal hooks and bridges that manage their way into earworm territory. Remove the facade of all metal needing to be avant-garde or unnecessarily brutal; Soilwork walks the tightrope of melodeath and sellout beautifully on this album, and they certainly get the most juice for the squeeze. With that being said, the ceiling is pretty low for the brand of death metal the band is writing here, and it must be evaluated through the same lens as every other album.

Let’s start with the vocals. The clean-sung vocals fit nicely into the structure of many of these songs, and while there are less death growls than an album like Colony by In Flames, for example, there are still enough to where you don’t feel like reaching for that Carcass album on the shelf. And say what you will about the vocals, but the foundation of riffs they stand on is chunky, groovy, and heavy as hell. “Mindfields” is a great example, where the riffs are cutting and relentless, and “The Bringer” which follows feels like it was lifted from a late-‘00s Meshuggah record (that’s a compliment). Now, the riffs can’t do all the heavy-lifting unfortunately, and there are plenty of passages on this album that feel like the band is relying a bit too much on the vocals that simply aren’t strong enough to carry the load. But when the full band is working at max capacity, the product is mostly positive.

There are hints of metalcore on this album but it isn’t overbearing, and it feels more like a distilled version of early Arch Enemy than all-out metalcore. This album certainly doesn’t have the aggressiveness of a typical melodeath album, a few brief riffs notwithstanding, but it doesn’t feel like it’s underachieving in that regard. Tracks like “As We Speak” and “Black Star Deceiver” are perfectly capable on their own, with solid rhythms and enough cool ideas on the guitar to keep them fresh. None of the songs on this album overstay their welcome, either, with the longest clocking in at barely over five minutes. There’s groove on almost every track, and nearly every hook is a reliable hit, as long as you haven’t been completely desensitized to the death growl. For when it came out, this is a quality album that deserves respect, because Soilwork could have completely sold their soul and they didn’t. There is enough here to keep hardcore fans around, but they do branch out a fair amount. Penalize them if you will, but this isn’t the melodeath black album by any means. That train left the station a while before this thing was ever in the works.

Natural Born Chaos feels like someone took all the components of its predecessor A Predator's Portrait, threw them into a stir fry and, as if by fate, a more brilliant and memorable concoction emerged. This is my favorite Soilwork album, and one of my favorite albums EVER within the melodic death metal medium, right alongside The Jester Race, or the comparably modernized Damage Done by their countrymen Dark Tranquillity in the same year. Literally every second of this album evinces either an instant adrenaline rush, or an emotional nostalgia from me. It's arranged beautifully, with every track arriving at the point where it will have the most impact on the listener, and all of the ingredients the band were experimenting the year before have swiftly borne fruit.

The band chose the perfect producer/engineer for this album in Canada's legendary Devin Townsend, who clearly helps emphasize the more progressive and atmospheric sheen as it was likely influenced by his own projects like Ocean Machine or Strapping Young Lad. Together they really seemed to deconstruct the grooves, the leads, Speed's myriad of charismatic vocal styles, synthesizers, and percussion and then LEGO them together into something immediately more accessible. His harsher vocals dig more into a Phil Anselmo-like badass machismo without fully abandoning the Lindberg rasping capacity, and they sound great, but it's the cleans, the harmonies that have really come forward here, and along with the brighter and more interesting synthesizer tones they create a ton of the atmosphere, especially when they are drifting over some of the instruments' darker passages. The drumming is fucking great, the guitars manage to harness all the influences of thrash, groove, prog and melodic death into a riff-set that is NEVER shown up by either of the aforementioned.

There are no weak tracks among these, every song is a hit for me, from the pent up power of "Follow the Hollow" or "The Flameout", to the proggier synth-endowed numbers like the title track or "Mercury Shadow". Choruses are absolutely epic throughout, and every track has subtle, memorable licks all over the place, thus it's tough to pick favorites, but if I was on a short car ride or a quick gym rep I'd likely smash "Mindfields" or "No More Angels", concise and immortal blood-pumpers that never fail me. Not that any of it fails me, really, I listened to this album (and the comparable Damage Done) hundreds of times when I first got them, I think I remember ordering them from The End Records way back when, and they just became instant posterchildren as the 'future' of melodic death metal, since they had all but stripped much of the 90s cliches to sound more contemporary and forward-thinking...

Now, maybe that future didn't always pan out, since a lot of attention shifted away from the niche later, but at the time it was riding on a lot of hope and potential, feelings that this album still wells up within me, even today in 2023 as I sit here reviewing it. I still feel like I'm hearing a glimpse of tomorrow, a retrofuturistic evolution upon the Whoracles and Slaughters of the Soul, which I like even more than any of those seminal pieces. If I had any critique whatsoever it's that the bonus track "Kvicksilver" just sounds like an amalgam of ideas from other, better ones, but it's not part of the core experience, and as I mentioned, there are already riffing sequences or ideas here that feel as if they were directly lifted from A Predator's Portrait and dramatically improved. Otherwise, Natural Born Chaos is just my jam, a record that makes me smile for 42 minutes straight, that makes me want to scream, to move, vital signs rising and falling with each riff, each fill, each vocal phrasing.

-autothrall
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This is it. The purest manifestation of what Soilwork as a core musical concept and sound had been about all these years. The band's ultimate purpose and mission, what they were driving towards, unbeknownst to them as artists reaching for an abstract creative goal and achieving greatness in the end. The band started out as a standard melodic death metal project, albeit fairly remarkable with its quality despite submitting to the conventions of the genre, and with a certain flavor to them but stylistically unable to pull away from the established norm. The sound here is somewhere between alternative metal, modern hard rock, prog, groove, with obvious remnants of the Swedish melodic metal identity. The mixture is completely homogeneous but more importantly, gloriously potent.

What this album achieves best is creating an atmosphere so unique there's nothing decades later that comes to mind, no album whatsoever, that quite feels this way. It's so rare and so precious when that occurs. A part like the chorus to 'As We Speak' comes across quite frankly as a mess technically; the guitars play octave chords, then fat power chords with heavy palm mutes, then go syncopated a little bit, then a note slide right in the middle of it all, then back to power chords, with a wild key-changing synth lead melody on top and then the harmonized vocals...; and yet no one would bat an eye finding it incoherent.

Then, the chorus on 'The Flameout': how unique is the atmosphere on this section ? It genuinely sounds like, for a moment, the listener might be on a different plane of existence, at the risk of sounding hyperbolic. It's like the plainest, most genuine moment of pure beauty in sorrow and solemnity, like a hidden garden one has stumbled into by accident that's completely detached from anything they'd known. The outro chorus in particular, that ends with just the two vocal harmonies is so profound that during those last seconds it sounds like something out of Gregorian chants. In one word: angelic.

'Blackstar Deceiver' has to be the most unique chorus on this and one of the rarest occurrences on any record ever for that matter with its most unusual key change, midway through the chorus, and its up-and-down fluctuation in emotion. The ease with which it goes from sad to dark, to epic is musically astonishing. How the band splits it in half into two totally separate parts and yet makes it addictive rather than painfully amusical is a feat of the highest order. Brilliant, spectacularly novel stuff.

The album offers a wide variety of moods and ambiances and exploits its potential entirely, or very close to it. Some are hard rock spirited heavy tunes like the title-track 'Natural Born Chaos' with its mischievous pentatonic gusto. Some parts rather procure a sense of euphoria, like the bridge on the same 'Natural Born Chaos', the bridge section on 'As We Speak', or the track 'Follow the Hollow'. There are also the emotionally charged and melancholic 'The Bringer' or the album closer 'Song Of The Damned' and its absolutely lamenting demeanor.

One of the main strengths and distinct attributes on here is also that the heavy guitars don't have to dominate the songs and be the sole backbone for each track. They are instead used as just one component in the whole that cleverly complements the synths and/or vocals. Finally, a note on what allows an album to shine at all: the production. Devin Townsend is known for producing overly packed tracks and stuffing them with layers of instruments, and there might be a bit of that going on here, but all things considered for such an ambitious album that came out in 2002, the production constitutes a quality rather than a flaw.

This is one of the most unique albums not just in metal but in music in the broadest sense which required a totally specific mixture of influences brewing overtime in the minds of exceptional song-writers, and years of honing their craft and pushing the envelope without worrying about walking on uncharted territory in a field notorious for its witch-hunting. Unique and unsullied by dogma of any kind. A total, complete work of art at the fundamental level.

This is one of the most shallow, unabashedly poppy albums you'll hear as a metal fan. It's genuinely impressive how little substance or depth there is to this. The song structures are identical - you could rearrange the tracks any way you wanted and it wouldn't affect how the album is perceived because all of the songs are the same: chuggy verse, sugary chrorus with Strid singing, do it again, breakdown/bridge part, do the chorus again, maybe repeat it some more or go back to the main verse riff to close the song. You know, the rock song structure. All the riffs are carefully rounded down so as to avoid being abrasive, and even at its most aggressive this album is still incredibly playful and inviting for melodic death metal. If you're looking for an album that evokes any sort of raw, unfiltered emotion, you'd best be looking elsewhere. While I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a nu-metal album (as a few dumbasses did when this came out, it seems), I can definitely see why this would appeal more to a fan of Shinedown or Static-X than an old In Flames junkie.

All that being said, this is an extremely listenable album. Ever heard the phrase “in one ear and out the other”? Yeah. Natural Born Chaos has a warm fuzziness that permeates through its guitar tone, with every element carefully mixed with an industrial precision (Strapping Young Lad Easter egg by Devy?) that makes the album incredibly easy on the ears. This doesn’t sound like industrial metal, mind you. There’s a faint resemblance to Fear Factory in some of the choppy stutter-chugs, but that’s about it. I feel like using the word “industrial” or perhaps “robotic” to describe the album, though, and it’s because Natural Born Chaos has no...soul. There’s a crisp, glossy sheen lining the music, not just in the production but also in the performances. All of Strid’s choruses are ear-pleasing enough just because of that warm tenor voice of his, but never awe-inspiring enough to make any song stand out. It’s hard to know what the standout single would be for this because literally every song sounds so fucking identical and every chorus is so equally kinda-catchy. The guitars combine a lot of playful melody with precise, choppy grooves, but man I find myself longing for a sour note in the solos to make me feel some sort of non-neutral emotion.The keyboards are only further proof that this was probably generated by a groove melodeath AI. Is anyone’s life gonna be changed by the lyrics of a song called “Black Star Deceiver”? Do people actually read the lyrics and find deep emotional resonance in Soilwork’s haphazard ESL poetry? My guess is probably not.

It seems like this is considered one of the band’s more popular albums overall, but people also indicate this as the point where the band started to sell out. That makes sense, because there’s still a few Gothenburg melodeath riffs sprinkled about and some of the solos are fairly energetic, so if you are a fan of the older stuff this is probably the last point at which you’ll get any kind of enjoyment out of the band. If you’re a melodeath/groove metal fan, this is about as close to an exact approximation of that genre as it gets, so you’ll probably really enjoy this. It’s a good representation of what the genre can sound like at its most refined, with an equal balance of influences coming from death metal, Pantera and pop. One could even say it’s a foundational and influential album for the style - well, at least every melodeath band on Nuclear Blast sounded like this for a few years. You don’t have to think at all when you listen to Natural Born Chaos, but to be fair there’s probably a lot of people out there that prefer it that way. Well executed in an artistically bankrupt sub genre, this album is about as good as it could have been, with the caveat that it was never going to be great.

Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos is one of the best melodic death metal releases and might even be the group's greatest record ever. The album title doesn't do this cleverly written genre highlight justice while the creative cover artwork is as memorable as the ten tracks that can be found here.

The key to success was the addition of keyboarder Sven Karlsson to the line-up. His atmospheric, melodic and mysterious sound layers add a lot of depth to this album. The song writing has also become more concise as it focuses on consistent tracks around the four-minute mark that get straight to the point. Several songs include creative ideas in form of short radio play overtures, dreamy acoustic guitar passages or extended keyboard sections but these elements are always short and concise. They are particularly cleverly interwoven with the band's oppressive melodic death metal stylistics. The band however sounds much more melodic than before thanks to a great combination of uplifting guitar and keyboard melodies and a more prominent use of clean vocals. The choruses are also particularly catchy and memorable as almost every single song on Natural Born Chaos would be a potential hit single for Scandinavian radio and television channels.

Among the most outstanding tunes, one has to note the fast and heavy opener "Follow the Hollow" with its numerous electronic sound experiments and highly diversified vocal skills, the surprisingly smooth and soft "As We Speak" that might upset traditionalists, the modern, melodic and melancholic "The Bringer", the numbing "No More Angels" with hypnotizing keyboard sounds and uplifting acoustic guitar passages and finally the dynamic and melodic album closer "Soilwork's Song of the Damned". The relatively smooth production by genre standards blends in perfectly.

To keep it short, Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos is atmospheric, catchy and melodic as it offers ten incredibly well-written potential hit singles. If you like the melodic records of Dark Tranquillity and In Flames released around the same time, you can't get around this wonderful melodic death metal highlight that has aged very well and still grows with every single spin.

Unlike the FNF, a disgrace to music, Soilwork did do their thing right here. There are lots of melodies. Not as much of that horrendous pseudo-industrial tone to it, and the guitarists actually have a job here instead of following the rhythm of the double base. Still, it’s Soilwork. Meaning: average vocals, worse-than-predictable songwriting, and the neverending heard-it-before feeling. Almost every song is the same in terms of atmosphere (as far as the songs actually have that), and there is still this groovy-verse/melodic-chorus cliché that needs to get out of the way.

But.. Rejoice! Soilwork did what they do, and they did their best on this album. The Flameout suffers from the boring groove verse, but the chorus actually has multiple melodies. Not just the “hey let’s take 3 random chords, put them together and see if there is a fitting vocal line for it”. The same goes for No More Angels, which is even better as the main riff is melodic too!! The only songs on this album which don’t have sufficient choruses are Mercury Shadow and The Bringer. Mercury Shadow sounds forced (especially the rhyming) while the latter is just a mallcorish anthem-like singalong. And yeah, that sucks.

Luckily there are more good songs than bad songs on here. The album starts bad though with Follow the Hollow, along with Mercury Shadow and The Bringer, the only song on here which gets the notion “BAD”. The verses are with some forced time signature changes, disrupting the flow. The chorus is quite decent, but the stupid lyrics kill it immediately. (“take a look, take a ride, stay by my side”. Nice rhyming Speed, ride/side... I can acknowledge a real poet from miles, and you.. ah nevermind) After the slow start the album really opens up. As We Speak is a hybrid of a ballad and a standard melodic death metal song, and it works really well. The melodies are soothing, constant and are not solely done by the vocals. Further going comes 2 rather decent tracks. The Flameout and the title track suffer both from the Soilwork Syndrome, meaning that only some effort is laid in the choruses. The verses are boring, forgetful and useless whatsoever while the choruses are massive, memorable and actually quite complex. At the second half of the album is the mixed bag of really great songs and really bad songs. As Soilwork is mainly about the choruses, the songs with good choruses are instant winners, while the others are quite tacky. Mindfields, Black Star Deceiver, No More Angels and Song of the Damned all have great melodies. The Flameout and Mercury Shadow don’t. It can’t get easier.

Soilwork is still Soilwork though. As I said before; the groovy-verse/melodic-chorus needs to be banned from any Soilwork jam from now on. This is what kills many of the songs. The Flameout could be so much better if it didn’t suffered from that boring ass verse, degrading the song to only “decent”. The same goes for Mindfields, The Bringer, Mercury Shadow. Hell, practically every song on here. This is Soilwork’s biggest mistake, and they should be aware of it as it kills about 80% of their material. The last song: Song of the Damned is the only song that doesn’t fit 100% to this description. There are some melodies, not too much on the background, but also not enough on the foreground. Luckily there are some songs in which I can forget the verses quickly as the fantastic chorus kicks in. Mindfields immediately comes to mind, as well as Song of the Damned. But also Black Star Deceiver, No More Angels and As we Speak are quite good.

Sadly Soilwork didn’t learn from their mistakes. They went from this decent record to the atrocious Figure Number Five, slowly getting up at Stabbing the Drama to eventually kill every credibility they’ve ever had in anything that requires an IQ of more than 25 with Sworn to a Great Divide. I can’t speak of some holy grail here, nor can I of something that resembles the lost arc. But I still hope that Soilwork takes a listen again to this record and see the light. This was Soilwork’s opus, and if they managed to fix the bad half of it, it could eventually end up in unimaginable quality music.

This is one of the very few albums that impressed me from the second I first heard it. Further listens would blow me away, and for me it remains the ultimate album born out of the Göteborg-scene. Soilwork had started to include clean vocals on the predecessor, "A Predator's Portrait", but it was on this one that they really shone, and helped give us the catchiest and most infectious album from Sweden to date. Sadly, "Natural Born Chaos" was the highlight of Soilwork's career, as things started to fall apart with the albums that followed. Anyhoo, let us not dwell on the disappointments, but instead focus on this record.

"Natural Born Chaos" has everything. From brutal melodic death, complete with growling and frantic guitarwork (most evident in opener 'Follow the Hollow'), to soothing passages, with clean vocals and haunting choruses (more evident in closer 'Soilworker's Song of the Damned'), and everything in between. Most songs features both extremes. 'The Flameout', for example, has an uncompromising verse which kicks you right where it hurts, but the vocals in the chorus does its best to soothe the pain you might experience. This also goes for songs such as 'Black Star Deciever' and 'As We Speak'. The only song that doesn't have clean vocals is 'Mindfields', but that doesn't make it any less catchy. While most songs follow the same formula, in no way is this a repetitive album. All ten songs stand out, and are instantly recogniseable, no matter what order you might play them in, or where you choose to start the songs; they all have their unique identity. A factor in that may be producer Devin Townsend, who apart from focusing the band, and delivering a killer production job, also does some vocal work on two of the songs. This was the only time Soilwork had Devin as producer, and obviously he was a good influence on them. Too bad he wasn't available on later albums.

Vocalist Speed does an excellent job switching between harsh and clean vocals. Both styles suits him well. The guitarwork by Peter Wichers and Ola Frenning is topnotch as well. They deliver furious and intricate riffs and licks, while their solos tend to be slower and more melodic, giving different appropriate shades of aggressiveness where needed. And one must not forget drummer Henry Ranta (who would later quit the band), whose work on this album remains some of the most impressive drumwork I've ever heard. Not that he's especially technically proficient (i.e. Gene Hoglan), but he has a touch and style I've never heard from anyone else, and it suits this style of music so well. Keyboardist Sven Karlsson also does a great job, delivering sounds and effects exactly how they should be, and where they should be. He help make the songs that much more special. He even plays hammondorgan on 'Black Star Deciever', with great results.

If you like your daily dose of Göteborg-style metal, and STILL haven't heard this album, I wholeheartedly recommend it to you. I doubt there will ever be released quite such a infectious, catchy and groovy, yet harsh, brutal and wicked album in the future. I love it!

The album that marked a change in Soilwork's sound is not as bad as some would have you think, it's quite good actually. At ten songs, they're all good, but five in particular are excellent and stand out, that five being. "Follow the Hollow", "As We Speak" "Mercury Shadow" "No More Angels" and "Soilworker's Song of the Damned". Those five rule leaps and bounds, the others are just good.

Production wise, this could very well be considered Soilwork's "Heaviest" album, as the riffs here chugg alot as opposed to flow as the older stuff did. I think Devy did a excellent job with production duties here, very clean, heavy and loud and doesn't irritate the ears when played loud, and the keys give it an aura of sound of sorts, "stratosphere" I like to call it. Which is why I perfer Sven's key work over Carlos. Sven creates a stratosphere with his keys, has surround and such. Carlos went for overall atmosphere, every keyboardist does that.

Vocally, Speed is much better here than he was on the previous album. He actually sounds like a competant singer here, not as good as on the next two releases, but much better than the previous ones. He does a great job showing his range on "Follow the Hollow" where he performs some bellowing death growls, his overall transistion on this song is standout. Great vocal work on this album. What makes Speed so great is, is that he stands out, his instantly reconizable voice really shines in the projects he does.

The guitars are standard Soilwork affiair, nothing short of excellent. Nice off timing riffage in "Follow the Hollow", Peter and Ola make a great pair. Drums are great as well, Henry always did a good job for the band, great cymbal work and often technical.

The real gold here, is how catchy this beast is. Soilwork was brutal at first, but then seemed to reconize that they can write catchy material, and here they just go with it and it sounds really great. Not many metal bands can write stuff as catchy as Soilwork can.

As for the songs, as I said, five of them rule everything and the other five are good, but nothing overly special, the weakest link appears to be "Black Star Deceiver" it doesn't have the force the rest have.

I think Natural Born Chaos is pretty rad I recomend it to open minded people. I say people because I've had friends who hate metal, say they've enjoyed this record, it's universal. If you're a flag bearer of metal, don't touch it, it won't do a thing for you.

Yes, this album is much different than Soilwork's previous ones, but I think this one is still good. This album is just as mindblowing as all of the one's they've put out in the past, imo.

I don't see how Natural Born Chaos could be compared to nu metal; its nothing like that. I realize the songwriting has become a bit more simplistic, but its still nowhere NEAR being nu metal. This is melodic death metal, and thats all.

There are plenty of catchy riffs (and no, they aren't "mallcore" riffs) and chorus' on this album. Unlike past works, the songs on this album can easily get stuck in your head. If I can start hearing one of these songs in my head in the middle of the day, that means the song has gotta be damn good. Soilwork have also focused more on clean vocals with this album. Considering all the other things they have changed about their sound- the clean vocals suit the music perfectly. Though I like the clean vox just as much as the death vox they used to use alot in the past.

So, untill these guys actually become full-out nu metal (as most people are already calling them), I'm going to stick by them and support the music they're making. The only reason I've given this album an 88% is because I didn't enjoy some of the added in effects on a song or two.

Best Tracks: Follow the Hollow, Mindfields, No More Angels, and Song of the Damned.

This CD isnt too bad. theres a lot of things i like about this album, and a few that i dont.

Follow the Hollow - This is my favorite song off the album. Its pretty hard, and the death metal voice singing, "take a look take a ride, stay by my side, dont dare to think, lets follow the hollow".. thats something i havent heard from soilwork before. i dont know if these are guest vocals are what. im too lazy to check n e wayz. but all in all this track is definetely one of the better ones in my view.

As We Speak - This song is also one of my favs. when i first heard this song, i immediately downloaded the music video. The song is better than the video. the video was quite boring and retarded. I especially like the riffs in this song. almost reminds me of Meshuggah and their strange off beat guitar riffs, yet hardcore and awesome as hell (i.e."New Millenium Cyanide Chris").

The Flameout - Not too bad on this one. a bit too repetitive if you ask me. The begining riff starts to get quite anoying through the song. They definetely should have found something else to do with that riff. The chorus though isnt too bad. prolly the best part of the song besides the intro to the solo and the solo itself.

Natural Born Chaos - The title track of this album doesnt catch my attention very much, i dont like it too much. Its pretty boring if you ask me, and also as flameout, a bit too repetitive in my eye. pretty crappy riffs, but hey most title tracks suck.

Mindfields - Pretty good, but again, somethin about it that i dont like. a bit too Nu-metalish.

The Bringer - Definetely a really good song. The begining leads you to beleieve how the song really is, a bit emotional, but pretty hard. One of the top songs on the album.

Black Star Deceiver - this song isnt half bad. the chorus sounds like it woulda been out of tune, such as the singing, but it fits well.

Mercury Shadow - This is another one of the songs i skip by when i listen to this album. Even though if you listen to it all the way through, you notice its not that bad, its just the begining that sucks pretty bad. and the chorus also makes you wanna skip it lol.

No More Angels - not too bad, but this song is definetely a keyboard abused song in the begining. It eventually gets on ur nerves to the point where u just take ur headphones off or reach over and switch the song.

Soilworker's Song of the Damned - This song is definetely one of the stand out songs on this album. Very awesome make of Song of the Damned. The keyboard isnt half bad in this either. Most people i let listen to this song like it eventually.

All in all this album isnt bad but definetely not one of Soilwork's best. Its not a bad 9 bucks to pick up. unless u get it at the mall for 18.. Bleh.. fuckin bitches. Never buy CD's that have 10 songs for over 12 bucks!

Ok, first and foremost, there are no mallcore influences on this album that I hear. Yes, they did simplify their songwriting, and the clean vocal experimentation on A Predator's Portrait has now become a focal point of every chorus on Natural Born Chaos. The playing overall is far less technical, and less aggressive than on albums like The Chainheart Machine. The thrash influences of past works are all but eliminated on this album, every song is a clean vocal chorus with mostly verse-chorus-verse structures surrounding it and minimal soloing. Also, Sven Karlsson(ex-Evergrey)'s keyboards have really provided a dominant sound on this album, so the guitars aren't as at the forefront as they once were. Have they watered down their sound a little? You can say that again. BUTBUTBUT. This isn't a bad album. Metal bands have been experimenting with clean/harsh vox since before mallcore even existed, and saying that makes Soilwork mallcore is like saying Opeth have always been mallcore-it's just plain stupid and untrue, totally unjustified. Some cool melodic riffing pops up on songs like Follow The Hollow (very strong opener, IMO) and No More Angels, and keyboards actually lend pretty good (if somewhat excessive) atmosphere to songs like As We Speak and Mercury Shadow. The lyrics are the best the band's done yet, always improving apparently. Devin Townsend's production is stellar, and his guest vocals are great-they're not really noticeable on Song Of The Damned, but his tradeoff screaming with Speed on the verses of Black Star Deceiver sounds great, Devin's in fine form as usual. This album's overall pretty catchy, but that tends to grow stale over short amounts of time, and I already don't listen to it much, especially compared to previous releases. My advice to the band (ha!) would be to go back to experimenting on their next album (I haven't heard Figure Number Five yet) and bring back those incredible and slightly technical song buildups and occasional thrash breaks, and have more diverse songs (with the constant clean vocal chorus and repetitive approach of NBC, the songs, while not quite blending together, definitely lose a little identity here and there). It's ok to scream, Speed. You're doing it fine in Terror 2000, don't try and over-compensate. Oh, and put a leash on Sven. I like his keyboard work that he's done with Soilwork and Evergrey, but it's apparently detracting from the riff department here, and that's a problem.
Soilwork are still an immensely talented band in my opinion and still have lots of potential, but they're squandering it a little in favor of a more accessible sound, and while still a far cry from selling out, it's a shame to see them waste their potential. (And I don't think they're following this shitty Gothenburg clean vocal trend thingy, cause I'm pretty sure that Natural Born Chaos came out BEFORE In Flames's Reroute To Remain and Darkane's Expanding Senses, both of which have similar approaches, and neither of which I enjoyed as albums.) Overall, a good album but they obviously compromised their sound somewhat, so try before you buy. (You've heard a couple of songs from this album, you've heard them all.) I don't regret picking it up, but I don't listen to it much anymore. Will I end up selling it? Time will tell.

Every single thing about this album sucks. Why metal-heads find soilwork amazing is beyond me. NU Metal fans I can understand like this album, its full of those horrible NU Metal elements, such as clean vocals over death(if you can call them that) metal guitars. This is the closet thing to being NU-metal with out actually being NU Metal. Soilwork has officially joined the rank of In Flames, and Cradle of Filth, a bunch of sell outs going mainstream and putting a bad face to metal. Soilwork combining with In Flames have practically ruined the Gothenburg scene.
As for the actualy music, it doesn't mix well at all. The guitars are a combination of metalcore and death metal, and they aren't even done well, it just sounds like the guitarist is trying to play heavy to show off. The limited number of riffs this album has are horrible. I was able to hear any melodie in the guitars at all, all they seemed to do was play random heavy notes, with no sctructure, they are also very choppy, changing direction alot. There is nothing good about the guitars except an occaisonal decent solo, and they are definatly the major downfall of this album.
I have no idea whehter the vocalist is trying to sing with harsh vocals, or is just a horrible death metal singer. It sounds like he is trying to sing like Anders from In Flames, but the vocalist is even worse than Anders. At times he sounds like Alexi from Children of Bodom, at when he sound like Alexi, it is the high point of the singing on the album, but it still sucks because it just sound like metalcore next to the horrible guitars. The biggest vocal problem is the forced clean vocals. Clean vocals sound horrible on metalcore or death metal music. Soilwork insists their songs need them, so they force them into the chorus and break the rhythm the song had going on, not that it was anygood, but it doesn't help any. If there were no damn clean vocals I would be albe to call this album decent Metalcore, because for metalcore it is decent.
The synts and keyboards on this album are done well, I do not have a problem with them. The only problem with them is that they don't belong. They sound very out of place, and seem like they should be in a more power or symphonic metal band. I do like them, they just don't fit the songs.
The drums and bass do not make this album worse or better, they just exist, nothing special about them, but they are not good at all.
Natural Born Chaos is a mixture of Melodic Death Metal, Metalcore, and Mainstream NU Metal, which is a horrible combination. At times I honestly though I was listening to the radio and hearing NU Metal, this definatly was the worst complete album I ever downloaded except aside from Slayers new album. The biggest flaw on this album is the mixture of metalcore and clean vocals. I would like the clean vocals if they were done in another type of music, perhaps doom metal, or power metal. The Gothenburg scene is going downhill. DO NOT BUY, WASTE OF MONEY.

Contrary to some I would have to say Soilwork has not put out a shitty release. Some bands by their fourth album have plenty of total shit. Look at Judas Priest! Soilwork however have honed and crafted a sound that is truly original. No other band sounds like this and I mean that in a good way. No one can keep up with their ideas, and few try.

This album has everything that makes Soilwork good. Crushing riffs, atmospheric keyboards, technical but crafted solos which never stoop to masturbation, overall instrumental skill, and Speed Strid's attitude-laden scream contrasted with his excellent clean voice, which has started to resemble some British new-wave singers.

The songwriting is amazing at times with one of the best songs ever written, "Black Star Deceiver" which perfectly separates yet integrates heaviness and melody. As always their lyrics are a cut above the rest. Fuck that, a cut, slash, and stab above the rest. No cliches to be found here.

This was produced by Devin Townsend and it is his best work by far. The first two Strapping Young Lad albums were destroyed by noisy busy messy production but no such thing is to be found in this work, thankfully. It's pretty much perfect, with every last insturment standing out clearly.

What isn't perfect is the songwriting in the big picture. The album has a few clunkers here and there, that do not integrate the melody to the heaviness in a way that pleases my jaded ears and, rather, sound a bit confused.You can't win em all though. It doesn't take away the power this album has.

Natural Born Chaos kicks ass. Buy it.

This fourth release from Sweden's Soilwork is undoubtably their cleanest, catchiest, most commercial sounding album yet. However, instead of this fact making the album worse, it just helps this album kick more ass! All the choruses on this album are clean, and very catchy. Strid's excellent melodic clean singing (unlike Anders of In Flames) is a huge compliment to the music. This album features a new and unique guitar playing style for Soilwork, one that showed up here and there in the previous album, but is used in full force here. The guitar riffs are more groove oriented rather than the fast gothenburg style riffs found on previous albums. This may turn some off, but I think it fits in well with the songs and adds alot of uniqueness to the band. Also, dont let this fool you, this does not man the riffs are crappy simplistic mallcore riffs. I actually find this more rythmic style of playing somewhat difficult to pull off well. Of course, the solos are still here and they are still fucking awesome. You will find that they are all short and sweet and to the point, but they still show off the fantastic playing abilites of Peter Wichers and Ola Frenning. The drumming is tight and as usual, very well done.

Highlights of this album include the fast paced and crushing opening track "Follow the Hollow", the melodic and catchy "As We Speak", the heavy and fast "BlackStar Deceiver", intensity in "The Bringer", and the beautiful and melodic closer "Song of the Damned". Sure, this album may be too commercial for some, but commercial never sounded so good, and for people who can appreciate some well-produced metal, get this cd now!

With Soilwork's 4th release, the band has not decided to stick to a sound that was held on the album before, while not abandoning their whole sound. After listening to NBC, one thing you may notice, if you have heard other albums of Soilwork, is the lack of intricate guitar work. I must stress the large absense of melody the guitars possess aside from the solos. I've heard very few licks or anything like that, that I loved so much on APP and that Chainheart was full of.
Where the guitars miss out the keyboards and vocals come in with full force. The mixture of the two are brilliant. While some metal fans probably think this is 'ghey,' you can't deny the dynamics of the two. The keyboards accompany the guitars at times and are even singled out in a few moments. The vocals stay harsh for the most part besides the choruses but the harsh vocals are a notch down from the intensity held on APP's while the clean vocal effort is way beyond. Most of the clean vocals come in on the choruses where 'Speed' Strid's voice soars with the help of Devin Townsend on production (who also lends his voice) who you definitely know was in the studio after listening to the Townsend-esque vocal feel on the chorus of Natrual Born Chaos. Almost all of the choruses make the songs worth listening to. This may make it sound like the rest of the song sucks but they are great enough to really make it worth praising alone. There is also a downside to the choruses unfortunately; though they are good, most of them are repeated too often. For as catchy as they are you can only handle them so much after you have listened to the album many times.
Soilwork finally has a handle on where they are going with their music but possibly simplifying their approach too much. Natural Born Chaos only loses a slight amount of intensity going with the guitar work as it is but I don't think I will be seeing any of my modern rock friends enjoying this one soon. It isn't amazing by any means, but if you give it a chance it can be a really enjoyable album. The longevitiy of this disc spending a lot of time spinning further down the road is questionable due to the catchy nature, but I don't really feel they do anyting horribly wrong on this album so I gave it a 70.