Khaos Legions

I think that it's fair to say that 'Khaos Legions' is regarded with its fair share of hate among the metal community. It's also fair to say that it is far from being Arch Enemy's best work, no matter what your take on the band is. However, I firmly believe that this album is nowhere near as bad as some people will try to tell you it is.

To be honest, while this album was a little unspectacular it was extremely solid throughout. Unfortunately that's what really lets the band down: nothing on this album is really anything special. More than half the album was decent and most of the remaining songs are at the very least listenable, but there isn't really anything that stands out as being exceptional. The album's best songs are all near the start or in the middle, and at the end of the album it really does feel more than a little bit lackluster considering what they've done in the past.

There are good things about this album, such as the variety still being there. Once again there are slow songs, heavy songs, melodic songs, instrumentals, etc but there isn't really the typical kind of kick-ass song you'd expect from AE (you know, the kind with the thundering riffs mixed with a melodic chorus and an epic solo). Angela's vocals are as strong as ever, as is Daniel's drumming (which is shown off at various points such as 'Vengeance Is Mine' and 'City Of The Dead'). The Amott brothers seem to have lost a little of their mojo in some of the songs, and Michael's writing is pretty poor for a lot of the album.

Something that annoys me on this album is the last half of 'Through The Eyes Of A Raven'. The majority of the song is pretty good, and I'd probably say it's my favourite part of the whole record. The chorus is beautiful, the verses a delicate in-between stage from melodic and heavy. And yet for some reason the solo (a part in which Mike and/or Chris usually excel at) just sounds so out of place. It's not particularly good either, so there isn't any kind of compensation to take from it, so why the hell is it there? From that point it goes back to the pseudo-heavy riffs that were used earlier on and just kind of plays out until the end, no fancy outro, no more melodic guitars, nothing. For a song that started off so promising, it really is a bit of a letdown.

Another track that annoys me is 'Thorns In My Flesh'. Seriously, what the fuck is going on? The first few chords don't sound like melodeath and the verses don't either. And then the chorus... Just no. No, I can't. I just can't deal with that shit. Sure, it's melodic, but it's not good melodic. And then the random bit on the guitars at the start decide to return again, and by this point I'm done. I have no idea what they're trying to do here.

In a way 'Vengeance Is Mine' is similar to 'Through The Eyes Of A Raven' in that it does sound pretty good for the most part (especially Daniel's drumming), but yet something lets it down, in this case the chorus. It just feels out of place (again) to have a chorus that is pretty quiet and restrained in an otherwise brutal song. Then 'Cult Of Chaos' has the opposite problem, where the only good part is the chorus.

It isn't all bad, as tracks like 'Yesterday Is Dead And Gone' show, but this album was a lost cause before it even went to market. Even the aforementioned track doesn't have anything on most of AE's previous stuff, even some of their pretty average stuff. The forty seconds of 'Turn To Dust', one of the instrumentals, pretty much summed up my feelings about this album. It's a sad sounding track that does make you wonder why you're wasting your time on this album when there are so many high-quality songs out there you could be listening to.

It does sound like I'm slagging the album off quite badly, but it's not as bad as everyone makes it seem. I don't know, maybe I had my hopes set too high, but 'Khaos Legions' really felt like it fell short of the mark. Considering that their last two albums were some of my favourite albums, maybe I did expect a little too much from them. Unfortunately though, the few bits of scrap salvageable from this shipwreck weren't as great as I'd hoped for.

But before I finish this review, I will say that it is at least better than 'War Eternal' and 'Anthems Of Rebellion'. Neither of those two albums had as much going for them as 'Khaos Legions' does, and at least the majority of the tracks on this can be listened to to some degree.

Arch Enemy promised killer riffs and intricate guitar work for Khaos Legions, and they delivered. On their last album Rise Of The Tyrant (not counting Root Of All Evil as that was a re-recording of older songs), I felt they were lacking in production value and a lot of the guitars and vocals blended into themselves, and the guitars also lacked a little in the intricate department. As a proper comparison, this album really resembles Doomsday Machine.

“Yesterday Is Dead And Gone” is the first single off of the album, and really shows off some flashy guitars, the most notable examples at the :38 mark and the solo at the 3:00 mark. Angela Gossow seems to get more demonic with her vocals, as they sound much deeper and should belong in an Exorcist movie.
“Bloodstained Cross” has one of the best examples of the melodic virtuosity that Arch Enemy performs so well. It starts off on hyper-drive, with screaming guitars and thrashing drums till it slows down for the chorus with overpowering vocals, with the guitars and drums filling the background, nothing too flashy. The guitar solo at the end is one of their finest yet and will stick in your head, much like the first solo in their song “Nemesis.”

“City Of The Dead” is one of the best tracks on the whole album, right off the bat shredding your ears off. It then slows down into a pounding, ear-punching verse with brutally low vocals, which I might add are really low even for Angela. The drums are more on point here and really keep the whole track going when you think it might slow down too much.

“Cruelty Without Beauty” is another classic metal song. It’s essentially a hybrid of Arch Enemy’s speed metal with death metal elements, such as blast beats, haunting symphonic overtones, and darker guitar shredding. The slow intro will fool you into thinking it will be a slower type of song, which I really don’t think exists in Arch Enemy’s vocabulary.

“Thorns In My Flesh” is the most demonic I’ve ever heard Angela’s vocals. The abuse that her throat must endure truly amazes me. The guitars in this track remind me of their song “Hybrid Of Steel,” as they really soar above the rest of the music and sound lighter than the rest of the album. The solos here are legendary, seemingly covering the entire fretboard at different parts of the song. The drums also closely resemble the same song as well, but it still stands out on its own.

Now to get into the second bonus disc Kovered In Khaos. This bonus disc comes with only the special editions of Khaos Legions and they are worth the money. Here there are 4 covers, from the bands Kiss (“The Oath”), Dream Evil (“The Book Of Heavy Metal”), Discharge (“Warning”), and Europe (“Wings Of Tomorrow”). My favorite here is the Dream Evil cover, as when I first started really getting into heavy metal, I would buy the Metal For The Masses compilations at Hot Topic and on my first comp this particular song is on it.

Arch Enemy, if it’s even possible, have gotten better and matured beyond all of their previous releases. Maybe re-recording songs for Roots Of All Evil influenced them enough to expand and bring in musical elements that were non-existent before. Think Doomsday Machine times ten. This is definitely a must have for the summer ahead.

The music Arch Enemy released has become so tired its almost painful. I really wish it weren't this way because the Swedish melodeath band actually started off really strong and consists aside from the vocalist, of very talented individuals. I have reviewed one of their Angela Gossow fronted albums in the past and while I felt the major reason I didn't enjoy it was her vocal performance on Khaos Legions there are a slew of different reasons I just wasn't feeling it.

This time around there are a couple of major issues that prevent this from being a good album. The new issue I noticed (and keep in mind I say "new" because this is only the second post-Liiva record I've given a listen) is that the riffs are mind numbingly similar sounding to what I had heard on Doomsday Machine. I mean they were just different enough that I could tell I wasn't listening to that album. But my god if I had a dollar for every time while listening to Khaos Legions I thought to myself, "hey this sounds like Doomsday Machine!", I would be a rich man.

It's not just the riffs either, there seems to really be no way to differentiate the solos from each other. They all sound about the same! I don't know what is going on with Michael Amott but it seems like someone sucked all the creativity out of his brain because if this were another band it would be getting a call from Arch Enemy's lawyers over how they stole riffs from the band. It's really difficult to get over as well. It makes listening to this album tedious and boring and you impatiently wait for the few unique moments before the creativity drought ensues.

The fact that there is actually a good song or two is what saves this album from being a drink coaster. But trust me they are few and far in between. The bass intro to Under Black Flags We March and the verse riffs of the song are actually pretty song. I especially what the Amott brothers made up for the chorus. Is it flashy or technical? Not at all but it makes for a good song and that's what matters. I also enjoy the guitar harmonies during the chorus for City of the Dead. It brings to mind the old school In Flames style of guitar harmonies Jesper Stromblad is so good at.

Another thing that really rubs me wrong is that Mike and Christopher Amott have so much talent yet they write music that sounds so similar to what they did in the past. That really polarizes the listener. And even if you like AE there is a chance that you might grow tired of what they are doing and probably won't like this either. Hell Daniel Erlandsson has played with Carcass, In Flames and Eucharist. We all know the guy has got chops but unfortunately he just isn't allowed to showcase them.

Angela Gossow once again proves she is a one trick pony. She continues to have her vocals screwed with giving them a fake robotic feel that just sounds terrible. You can easily tell this isn't really what she sounds like...in fact no one sounds like that because its messed with so much using layering and different things. Her lyrics are still atrocious as well. It has the angst and rebellion we have all experienced before...as teenagers. This topic is getting old and she really needs to expand her horizons to include different subjects instead of this lame stuff.

Arch Enemy continue their fall from grace with Khaos Legions. The material written for this album is so samey and similar to their previous work and not at all in a good way. The musicians all seem to be going through the motions and I can't help but think the song writers are going through a creative drought of sorts. Angela as usual is awful, nothing new there. If you were a diehard fan of something like Doomsday Machine then this album was made for you. If you are looking for something new or interesting I would move along.

Originally reviewed @ http://abaddonsmetalshop.blogspot.com/

Geeky spelling of its title aside, what first strikes me as absurd about this latest Arch Enemy album is the flag waving comic book appeal of its cover image. One gas masked lass surrounded by four others in some scene out of Killzone, waving their banners amidst some post apocalyptic wasteland. Naturally, this infers some manner of pride or conquest, which I'm assuming the band meant to enforce with their music and lyrics here. Let's face it, high visibility and appeal to 13 year olds and poseurs notwithstanding, this storied Swedish/English collaboration has not been on a roll these past few years. Personally, I've found that their best days are long behind them, peaking out on Stigmata and Burning Bridges ('98-99) when Johan Liiva was in the band, but at least early Angela Gossow era albums like Wages of Sin and Anthems of Rebellion had a handful of decent tracks on them. Not so for the ensuing Doomsday Machine or Rise of the Tyrant, and they REALLY hit a low with The Root of All Evil comp in 2009, a re-recording of cuts from the first three albums, with Gossow's vocals replacing Liiva, wholly unwelcome and unwarranted by any but the most tasteless and impressionable fan girls and khaos bros.

So then, how does their 8th original full-length Khaos Legions measure up? A 180 degree shift unto past glories? A competent and well executed foray into new terrain? To no real surprise or dismay, the answer would be a resounding 'neither'. This is nothing more than refurbished, vapid claptrap. Uninspired, recycled ideas performed with sterility for a Century Media paycheck, offal and fodder for the inevitable package tours with other high flight, overrated video rotators who bear the banner for 'extreme metal', when there is nothing whatsoever extreme involved. Really, though, that's not the main issue here. I wouldn't give two shits if Arch Enemy released a pop album the likes of Justin Bieber, if the music were not so predictably tired, cliche and ultimately a useless stain on the band's legacy which makes even the prior Rise of the Tyrant glow by any comparison. Khaos Legion might occasionally spew forth some half-baked, decent idea, or a riff worthy of the considerable talents of Michael and Christopher Amott, but in general it's as flat and exhausting as they come in the melodic death niche.

First and foremost would be the vocals. Now, I've never really gotten into Angela Gossow's style in the past, and consider her a lousy replacement for Liiva. It's not a gender thing, believe me. She just seems so dry and inauthentic, using and layering a Carcass like sneer with virtually no emotional or dynamic range, and she somehow manages to sound both bored AND boring on this phoned in lump of polished plastic. I simply cannot bear her attempts to sound 'menacing' and/or 'dark' when singing such cliche lyrics as the chorus to "Cult of Chaos": 'There are many ways to die, but only one way to live. Let the cult of chaos reign, be as free as you can be!' or "No Gods, No Master": 'I am who I am. Take it or leave it. A rebel at heart'. This entire album plays out like some motivational self-help recording set to mundane metal music. A 'metal' album for folks who purchase the most generic, cliche-ridden greeting cards for birthdays and holidays. They'll occasionally toss in a little something extra to the mix, like the shrill backing vocal of "Through the Eyes of a Raven" or Angela's sparse but awkward black metal snarl, but nothing can save how bland this all comes across.

I mean, really... "Thorns in My Flesh"? 'No more chains in my flesh! No more chains hold me down! I control my destiny!' It's two thousand fucking eleven. How about showcasing even an iota of creativity or poetic/prose sensibility? Hell, hire someone to do it for you. There are Pink songs deeper than this shit. But you know something? I might even be motivated to forgive or to participate in such inanity were the music itself not so banal. There are approximately two good riffs on the album. One is the Metallica-like speed/thrash frenzy in the verse of "Cult of Chaos", and the other the even more hyper shredding, escalated velocity of "Vengeance is Mine". Mind you, these are the 10th and 13th tracks, respectively, so you've got to wait a long time before anything of import happens, and even then, these songs contain their own share of bland power/thrash guitar progressions which sound like hand-me-downs from Accept, Judas Priest, or solo albums from their front men U.D.O. or Halford. For example, one of the riffs in "Under Black Flags We March" sounds like it was half-stolen from "Painkiller", and some of the lines in "Secrets "sound like knockoffs from late 80s King Diamond grooves.

Arch Enemy will occasionally surge into some mediocre death metal progressions in "Cruelty Without Beauty" or "Through the Eyes of a Raven", but it almost feels hammy and jarring next to the rest of the material. Wimpy transitions to cleaner guitars feel forced ("Cult..." again), and the leads throughout the album are crafted into these dramatic, limp wristed soap opera melodies. Such predictable, friendly patterns that Mister Rogers might like to whistle them to frightened neighborhood children. Not a single lead here stands out, stunning when this was such a strong component of the band back in the late 90s. What's worse, the album is 54 minutes and 14 tracks long (16 if you've got the Japanese bonus material), when it can't even assemble one or two tunes that feel suitably consistent, complete and engaging. Remember when they were writing 8-9 good songs on a CD with very little filler? Apparently they've decided to invert that practice.

I have no automatic or absolute aversion to an album which features a sterile, pop production in accordance with a more 'modern' or polished evolution of the melodic death genre. Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos and Dark Tranquillity's Damage Done are two examples that leap to memory, but they both have what this doesn't: fantastic songs. Authentic, enthusiastic energy balanced against stirring fits of sadness, in both the lyrics and melodies. A hint of creativity, or of the unexpected. Khaos Legions is an almost incessant misuse of a group of talented musicians. Sharlee D'Angelo and Daniel Erlandsson provide such an uninspired rhythm section here that you could replace them with almost anyone else and not notice the difference. The plasticity of the production leeches almost all the Amott riffing of its edge, but in truth, they weren't doing an admirable job of it anyway, and in the end this is their most underwhelming, underachievement to date. It's past time to pack it in. No wonder they're all wearing the gas masks: this stinks.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Arch Enemy, despite their obvious popularity and media exposure, are a band that I have remained somewhat ignorant of. One might chalk it up to just being a depressing oddball who only likes music that he discovered on his own, but my lack of interest in televised metal bands and particularly, Swedish melodeath outfits, has sort of left me at a loss with this scene to an extent. It’s not that I’m really hostile to the style, but just one of those quirky things where I just never really got around to it until recently. As such, despite my familiarity with Carcass, “Khaos Legions” is actually my first experience in dealing with this band, which according to some might be the equivalent of me discovering Dimmu Borgir through “In Sorte Diaboli”.

Suffice to say, this is a decent album that definitely moderates the aggression and catchiness factors into a nifty little, modernly tweaked package. Probably the only thing that separates this from In Flames during the “Colony” to “Clayman” era is a slightly stronger vocal job and a better technical display out of all members in congress. The overall melodic scheme of these songs isn’t out of line with some conventions first pushed by a handful of power metal bands on the heavier side of the equation, and occasionally there are parallels with some middle era works out of fellow Swedes Nocturnal Rites and Heed, right down to the tasteful keyboard elements and wild lead guitar elements, as unapologetically displayed on “Thorns In My Flesh” and “City Of The Dead”, which are among the stronger songs on a fairly evenly tempered expression of angst.

Perhaps a little bit more surprising, at least given my own experience with the lighter side of Gothenburg’s scene, is the overt thrash tendencies that interweave with the slowed down melodic and groove based passages, particularly in the cases of “Vengeance Is Mine” and “Bloodstained Cross”. Between the frenetic and highly virtuosic solos and the busy riff work, it’s hard to resist throwing the horns occasionally. The biggest pitfall of these songs is that often things will slow down just a little too frequently, to the point of making half the song a breakdown, resulting in a listening experience that’s a bit disjointed at times. Part of it may be the tenets of the style, which calls for frequent slow passages with a denser atmosphere, but here it works against the overt speed/thrash elements.

Basically, this comes off as a slightly faster version of the Gothenburg craze, particularly during the late 90s. The vocals are fairly one dimensional, though the fact that Angela Gossow is a woman might shock first time listeners given her work on here sounds manlier than Anders Fridén and Mikael Stanne combined, but the music picks up on any slack on her end of things. At times this sounds a little bit pretty and consonant for something that tends to be obsessed with chaos and suffering, but that tends to be the dilemma for most in this style. This will probably sit well with most fans of the genre, though any crossover appeal will probably be limited to power metal fans who don’t find the toneless shouting vocal aesthetic unbearable, ergo those who already listen to bands like Children Of Bodom and Kalmah.

In the main, artistic responses to the financial crash of 2008 and its political implications have been disappointing so far. In music, generally only artists who were already 'political' have been able to interpret this new age of struggle with any degree of success. From my MP3 collection I'm thinking of Muse, Max Cavalera's projects, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine, Kreator, Killing Joke, Fear Factory, and various rappers. This was to be expected, as it must necessarily take the emergence of a new working class movement to pose the questions which need to be answered by artists in the near future, or else everything is inward-looking resignation and self-pity.

However, the initial stirrings of the 'Arab Spring' coincided with melodic death metal band Arch Enemy's retreat into the Sweet Spot Studio in Halmstad, Sweden for the recording of Khaos Legions. In promoting the album, vocalist Angela Gossow told interviewers that the band - and her in particular - had been inspired by what was happening in Tunisia, Egypt, and so many other countries. The artwork was modelled on Eugène Delacroix's French revolution-era Liberty Leading the People, and Gossow clearly sees herself as symbolically being on the front line, roaring the rest of us towards freedom.

Cologne-born Gossow joined Sweden-based Arch Enemy in 2000, after they had recorded three decent but unspectacular albums with Johan Liiva. The ferocious intensity of her growl far eclipsed Liiva, and her fiery, passionate belief in anarchism started to inform many of the band's songs. At times this verged on a kind of punkish ultra-leftism, especially on 2003's Anthems Of Rebellion, which was very much concerned with individual change against a background of general conformity. As time has gone on and conditions have changed, her politics have matured, to reflect a greater collectivity. In that time, the band have specialised in fist pounding adrenaline rushes, often punctuated by soaring, transcendent, almost singalong lead guitar solos, but struggled to pull off a great album. This continuing process is evident on Khaos Legions. There's plenty of killer, but there's still too much filler.

The opening few tracks are absolutely storming. Riffing, police sirens and crowd noises build to a crescendo, before an impossibly strange male voice warns us that "From the ashes of a corrupt and dying world, they rise like a phoenix, a godless entity: they are the chaos legions." We're then straight into the first single, Yesterday Is Dead And Gone, with its wailing guitars, strident drums, and the pledge that "This is our reckoning day", in case you hadn't realised it already.

As you might expect, Bloodstained Cross is an inditement of religion's effect on human consciousness, and the urgent need to "Get off your praying knees" because "Armageddon is drawing near", and "All the prayers in this world won't help you now". The symbolic standard of anarchism is invoked on Under Black Flags We March. Against a pounding martial rhythm, Gossow shrieks that "Empires of corruption will fall", because "The more we have to suffer, the more we will fight".

Towards the middle, City Of The Dead and Through The Eyes Of A Raven are more brilliant bundles of fury. The former seems to be a portrait of ghetto life, "where the nameless live and breathe" amidst "misery, frustration, anger, depression" and "monuments of death". The latter gives each band member a moment to shine in an epic tale of war and paradise lost.

Precisely at the moment where the wonderful acoustic outro to Through The Eyes Of A Raven ends, the album stumbles badly. From this point on, Khaos Legions is hit and miss. Moralistic animal rights song Cruelty Without Beauty has little to recommend it. Thorns In My Flesh might lyrically be an attack on the self interested behaviour of the rich and powerful, but vocally and musically it feels like the punches are pulled. And Secrets is an extremely poor choice of album closer, because it sounds like a reject cut from 2001's Wages Of Sin. But Cult Of Chaos is good enough fight song, urging revolution as the next stage of evolution, and the Amott brothers pull off some very nice guitar work on instrumentals We Are A Godless Entity and Turn To Dust.

Returning to my introduction, Khaos Legions comes quite close to successfully interpreting this "new age of struggle". At certain times, it approaches perfection, and could be a superb soundtrack for Tahrir Square demonstrations or garment workers combating police on Sri Lankan picket lines. At others, it sounds samey, and recycles some of the band's less than glorious moments. I think Arch Enemy are yet to come up with their defining album, but then Gossow and company should find plenty of inspiration in the months and years ahead. For already extreme artists, there is a substantial challenge posed by the reigniting class war - how do you get even more extreme to mirror changes in society, yet have elements of light and shade?

It has been a long, long time since I have written a review, and there are several reasons for this. Firstly, I have been insanely busy with finishing college and getting work as a theatre electrician. Secondly, I have been trying to broaden my musical palette; I have been listening to things from the 50s and 60s, as well as plenty of drum and bass and electronic music, because I enjoy it and for the sake of variety. And lastly, I haven’t written a review in a while because I knew that I would have to shake away the rust by reviewing an album such as this, ‘Khaos Legions’.

I am not writing this review because it is an easy one to write, or using this as a warm up review for the torrent of fury I plan to one day unleash on Morbid Angel’s recent effort, or the (eventual) praise I intend to bestow Skinless’ ‘Trample The Weak, Hurdle The Dead’. This review will actually be quite difficult, because I genuinely don’t know how to re-hash the same material in the same way as they re-hash theirs, but yet that is all this album deserves, as the few of you who can still be bothered to offer Arch Enemy as much as a withering look will know by now.

In fact, I am almost wasting my time here, you could write this review for yourself. The cheesy, heavy-poppy harmonies are still there, delivered with such little drive or direction that they are only able to draw contemptuous glances from a now bored and indifferent audience. The drums, once the heartbeat of this project, are now pedestrian exercises in predictability and general average-ness, content to sit there and just BE on the record, apparently for no reason other than a metal band needs a drummer and so one has been provided. No creativeness is on offer here; the no-more-than-token blastbeat fails to administer any sort of adrenaline rush on ‘Cruelty Without Beauty’, the attempt at quirkiness and diversity on songs like ‘Through The Eyes Of A Raven’ serves as nothing but inconsistency and directionless confusion.

Incidentally, the lyrics on these songs actually have nigh-on fuck all to do with the song titles. Take ‘Through The Eyes Of A Raven’ as an example. Very narrow margins already of any sensible topic matter – perhaps you could work something in along the lines of, I don’t know, about how the snow covered landscape in Winter always looks bleaker from the eyes of the animals that have to contend with nature’s harshest and coldest conditions, or something. But what we have here is basically the equivalent of:

“I was really drunk last night
I threw up lots and I pissed in the street
I was looking at my hilarious reflection in a shop window
Oh – and there was a Raven watching me.

I was walking through a wood once
I heard a noise behind me and got scared
So I started running and didn’t stop until I got home
And this experience was made even more intense and grim because a Raven saw it.”

Angela, the ever-present weight tied to the ankles of this band as it slowly sinks to the bottom of a river somewhere, can’t help but prove once again that she genuinely doesn’t have any idea what’s going on when it comes to writing lyrics. Lyrics may not be that important to some fans of metal, but as a band if you believe yourself to be the rallying cry for the revolution of the (presumably) downtrodden and weak against the (presumably) all powerful corporate behemoth, then you had better have something decent prepared for when people listen to you, rather than the insincere and irrelevant rubbish on songs like ‘Under Black Flags We March’ or ‘Cult of Chaos’.

I don’t know what to say about the Amott brothers. They know they can do better than this, I mean they have ALREADY PROVEN that they can. The song writing is lazy and uncreative, every riff is a carbon copy of something either on the very same record or a previous one, the solos whizz by unable to repair any of the damage…it simply doesn’t make the cut anymore. As is normal on an Arch Enemy album, some things catch the ear; the occasional riff here, the odd guitar lick there, but not nearly often enough to warrant much merit at all. Later Arch Enemy albums are more centred round the mid-paced, chuggier riffs with an occasional thrash riff thrown in like an unwanted freebie, and that’s exactly the formula followed here to the letter. God, has anything happened to this band since their last CD…?

This shouldn’t even resonate with the metal community generally, at all. This band is terrible, these songs are terrible, this album is terrible, as will be the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that… Because Arch Enemy isn’t the type of band to know when to call it a day before all members lose the willpower to write something of worth. Devin Townsend had the guts to pull the plug on Strapping Young Lad before the steam ran out, the boys from Yyrkoon knew when to throw in the towel, as did Gorerotted, so why the FUCK can’t Arch Enemy do the same and save me from writing reviews like this?

This is, of course, is nothing groundbreaking, but that's not what we are looking for here, nor is it what we were expecting. We were expecting a good Gothenburg release and this is what we got!

The music is always quality melodic death metal led by the ferocious vocals of Angela. She sounds so vicious and it's awesome! The guitar work is a pounding attack brought to us by the Amott brothers. It has a razor sharp sound and the tone is perfect. The drum work is blistering with blast beats and fast fills building the backbone of the music. The bass is pretty much inaudible, which is not a good thing. The production values are perfect as expected. All in all, this release has its redeeming factors despite its errors.

What are the errors, you ask? Lets talk about the. First of all, the bass. As stated before, I can't hear it. That's a big minus. Furthermore, I believe the drummer lacks energy. Then we have Angela. Yes, she is ferocious. Yes, she is vicious and sounds evil. She is amazing but sometimes I find her quite monotonous with a lack of variation subtracting from her overall performance. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I got tired of the whole melodeath scene. I don't know. It's just lacking something in my opinion. Also, I believe that she should not be excused because she is a woman. Imagine just for a moment that these growls are coming from a man. Would you be impressed? The answer is probably no unless you are highly inexperienced when it comes to death metal vocals. Also, I believe that some of the guitar solos could be longer, but again that's just my opinion. Of course, there is no doubt that the Amott brothers are skilled musicians!

Overall, this has its flaws but still flows quite well. It gives what the fans want: melodeath. Maybe this is mainstream but I don't care. Does it matter if it's mainstream when it's good? No! So the conclusion is if you want some high-quality melodeath, then buy this. If you enjoyed the band's previous work, then buy this. If you never cared for the band and rejected them without listening to their music, then give this a try! If you already hate Arch Enemy for your own reasons, then this will definitely not change your mind. This is not a masterpiece, but it is still an enjoyable listen!