City of the Damned

Coincidentally or not, 2006 was the year when two of the prime thrash advocates on Swedish soil, The Haunted and the one under scrutiny here, decided to switch gears towards mellower waters, abandoning their firm aggressive stance. If The Haunted came very close to a complete fiasco with this “Dead Eye”, these hellish troubadours at least managed to save themselves some dignity with a marginally more acceptable recording, one that didn’t shift too drastically from their earlier old school thrashy shenanigans.

And yet the band lost the accumulated inertia to a fair extent after a string of three pretty strong outings. Having started as black/death metal purveyors with the debut and the previous incarnation In Cold Blood (one demo), they changed their approach to classic thrash on the sophomore, peaking on the excellent “Wicked Is My Game” two years later. Regardless of the culmination achieved, it seemed as though the guys still had more to show with their characteristic combination of very razor-sharp cutting guitar work and nice melodic hooks, not to mention the rightest possible time for venomous retro thrashisms that was the beginning of the new millennium.

Well, four years down the line the band are in a gloomier, more introspective mood, willing to give in to their more pessimistic inclinations, and although “Devil's Station” is a vintage moshing classic thrasher, it misleads the listener big time as such headbanging fests are not encountered later despite the title-track’s edgier riff-patterns and the short “Like Clowns We Crawl”’s speedier, more energetic escapades. With “Reaper's Calling” the album enters a dark, morose realm and doesn’t leave it till the end, the overall approach quite reminiscent of the one on Kreator’s “Outcast”, a listenable, but hardly striking blend of power metal and proto/post-thrash that is at times close to the more expressive thrashy carnival (the cool sprightly speedster “I”), but more often is it somewhat tedious, not very imaginative groovy rhythms (“Ghost I Carry”) that don’t really lead anywhere. The dynamics doesn’t get lost completely, and although the longer, supposedly more thought-out material (“To the Gallows”, “Rising”) inevitably brings a couple of monotonous semi-balladic/doomy variations, the whole package is not exactly an embarrassment.

Neither is it the finest example of a less compromising metamorphosis on the field; the band just felt a bit under the weather at the dawn of a new era, for whatever reason, and had voted to not bash the hell out of their instruments for a change. The resultant shift should work for their diehard fanbase but would hardly win them too many new admirers as this particular hybrid wasn’t the audience’s darling, not at the time of release anyway. As a momentary respite it certainly delivers although one would always wonder why the band had decided to take it… their wicked games of old didn’t seem like they had reached their conclusion…

and they weren’t, like the follow-up “Written in Blood” showed although the latter came out after nearly a decade spent in silence. A lengthy period taken for retrospection/introspection/whatever that at least produced a more convincing recording as the guys’ earlier vigour and enthusiasm were more readily displayed, the new material still holding onto a couple of darker, less thrash-fixated motifs. Yeah, it’s not easy to get out of such a pensive, pessimistic city… sorry, state; it pulls you in and holds you in its lethargic, anti-climactic snare… at least until all the band members rise as one one day and raise hell, like in the good old games.

A phantom train zips across a doomed city line, and the fourth album from Raise Hell arrives, some four years after Wicked Is My Game. Some of this delay was likely due to a pair of lineup changes, and the acquisition of a new label after the deal with Nuclear Blast expired. Soon after the band released Wicked is My Game, Jonas Nilsson made the decision to hire a vocalist so he could focus solely on his guitar work. Honestly, you wouldn't notice, since the studio guitars here are hardly more complex, so it must have been a live gig decision. The new vocalist is Jimmy Fjällendahl, and while I don't enjoy his vocals nearly as much as Nilsson, he's at least got the right type of approach, a caustic snarl that fits in well with the spooky horror show thrash that the band have continued here from the past two albums. The other change is Joakim Kulo joining the band to replace Torstein Wickberg, who departed in 2004.

City of the Damned is actually a better album than Wicked is My Game, but it takes a few tracks to get revved up. "Devils Station" does not exactly excite through the thrash riffing, but it gives the listener a chance to adapt to Fjällendahl's snarls. The atmospheric break around 3:30 features a minimal, resonant guitar melody that sounds cool over the writhing rhythm beneath and the marching drums, helping set up the title track "City of the Damned", which is a slower, groove laden thrash hymn with a better, forward momentum, although it too lacks in riffs that would have taken more than 60 seconds to compose, and the bluesy guitar twang does little for me. I enjoyed the percussion used in the intro to "Like Clowns We Crawl", and Fjällendahl puts a nice swagger to his vocals here that almost matches the charisma of Nilsson on prior records. The riffs are in general predictable but fun, though when the band picks up to a "Holy Wars" like faster rhythm and the leads breakout, it's truly a pleasure. "Reaper's Calling" has some mid paced thrash grooves, a Grave Digger-like chorus, and some nice harmony around the lead.

The rest of the album is mixed in quality, but thankfully, nothing dips below average. "Open Your Mind" and "Ghost I Carry" did little for me, but the melodic vocal climax and the haunted house thrash break after 3:00 in the latter was worth hearing. "My Shadow" and "I" both have a solid array of faster riffs, and "To the Gallows" has a few excellent, charging moments where Jimmy's vocals echo out across the rhythm section. The last track "Rising" is probably the most notable on the album, for both the creepy keyboards that manifest the perfect, cheap horror atmosphere, and the slow, thrashing rhythm weaves in and out of a verse passage with expressive vocals, and clean guitars, before another melodic chorus which yet again delves briefly into a power metal feel.

Though are very few head-spinning riffs to be found in this City of the Damned, and the lyrics are somewhat bland (like the last album), but the songs are reasonably well written and you're unlikely to find yourself bored by its contents. I did miss Nilsson's vocals here, yet his replacement is worthy enough to carry the torch, and by this point he'd already been with the band for years. Like Wicked Is My Game, the production is clear and present, and in particular some fine work was done with the vocals to give them some depth, catering to the thrash and thrust with echoes and other effects. Almost completely gone are the crushing, raunchy tones of Not Dead Yet, and all of the band's previous black metal influences, save for the fact the vocalist is rasping. In fact, Holy Target and City of the Damned sound like two entirely different bands. This is far more controlled than other Swedish black/thrash hybrids, and the band's pure rock influence continues to grow through the hooks and bluesy touches that flourish throughout this material. This album might not be one for the books, but I can hear no indicator that Raise Hell are giving it any less than their best effort, and maturing as songwriters, even if this particular batch was not as enticing as what they summoned forth on the first two records.

Highlights: City of the Damned, Like Clowns We Crawl, Rising

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com