Legion of the Damned – Cult of the Dead

A mixture of excreting barbed wire and being slapped in the face.

A collection of messy riffs, bland screamy vocals and monotonous double bass drumming that sounds like a wood chipper which has had a cement mixer shoved in it. Most of what I’m hearing is nothing short of boring. Just because you’re ripping your vocal chords and talking about the dead rising to rip out the vital organs of everyone on the planet does not stop you from being entirely boring and causing me to slip into some sort of coma.

It’s a shame that Legion of the Damned seem have glued their face to a sheet of paper that reads “Do really boring death metal” because there are some glimpses of really interesting ideas that are more versatile styles into the mix and cause a random spasm of interest in my tiny mind that did drag my through the album and help to relieve the boredom.

The bits that seem to cause the most excitement in the album are the breakdowns, bridges and middle eights, which elevate from the standard rhythm and single tone screaming that fills the rest of the tracks. These slight nuances are very engaging and really do stem the tedium that the rest of the album brings. These sections alone are not enough to save the album from the pits of my bin, but they are enough to keep me listening to the end and even listen to the album more than once, which is more than most albums do.
Listen to this album:  With rotting flesh and pierced eyelids.

Rating: 67%

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“Cult of the Dead”

Trivium – Shogun

An unhappy medium.

Their first (major) album, full of screamcore and shoutmax. They tour with Machine head.
Their next album, full of thrash and Metallica copies. They tour with Metallica
This album, a mix of the 2 styles, with the singing less Metallica. They’re touring with All That Remains and 36 Crazyfists.

This band really is an skeleton key to the many metal boxes.

The thing is, that it doesn’t fit together properly. The styles are dumped on top of each other and overlap in a horrible way that confuses you as to what this band actually are. It’s not like they’ve cleverly found a way to incorporate the different styles into a format that flows nicely between the two in a really nice way. No, they just slap them one on top of the other, like three different jigsaws that have been put in the box, but nobody knows what the pictures are supposed to look like.

This causes each of the styles to lose a lot of substance, especially the screaming parts, which I feel that the band are only doing to appease their fans who were outraged at the complete lack of vocal chord grating that went on in the last album. You can almost hear Heafy sigh and say “Oh, okay then, if you want me to” just before each time he screams.
The singing parts I prefer on this album, because they are more individual to the band, and not just a blatant rip-off. While I still don’t like the singing bits, the fact that they sound like a unique band, I have to give some kind of credit.

Overall, by trying to please everyone, and still keep their integrity, I think they’ve produced an album that will please nobody and has really let the band down.

Listen to this album: While drinking a weak lemon drink.

Rating:55%

Extracts from ‘Kirisute Gomen’, ‘Down from the Sky’, ‘The Calamity’ and ‘He who spawned the furies’

Down from the Sky

Metallica – Death Magnetic

After St. Anger, a lot of people lost faith in Metallica.

We all know what happened, we all got very annoyed at the way they blamed us for their less than adequate album selling precisely -1 copy (I stole it from the shop and then returned it) and this has really damaged the reputation of Metallica, and still people feel very bitter about it, and so it’s very hard not to have this at the back of my mind while listening to this album. They need to do a lot to make people forgive them.

One thing that helped my forgive them was seeing them live on their Master of Puppet’s 20th Anniversary tour where they were amazing, simply one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen. This was a help to me to listen to this with a completely open mind.

Fist off, this album is not going to be a classic, although, after half a dozen listens, I am enjoying it more each time.

I’ve seen a lot of poor reviews claiming the death of Metallica and saying that this album is poor, but I think that it’s hard for a band with such legacy to bring out an album that ends up being critically acclaimed, somebody name me one band where people say that their 20th album is their best.

So lets take it from the start.

We start with a slow intro into That Was Just Your Life, the guitar plucking your ear hairs as you wait expectedly to hear what’s in store. Blaw Blaw, some nice heavy riffage comes in and drum, blam, drum, blam and we’re off with a nice fast number that reaks of olden day Metallical. I find myself nodding and tapping.

We continue on through some nice tempos and rhythms, breaks and some nice singing from James Hetfield.

At times the songs sound very similar to other Tallica songs of old, but these similarities are at the edge of hearing that twang some memory. Like when you see something that reminds you of the dream you had last night and you go ‘hmmm, oh well.’

The album is mainly heavy with a few flecks of soft music in there, with only one purely soft song ‘The Unforgiven III’. I’d say they succeeded in capturing the style of old; sometimes bands say that their next album is going to back to the style of their old material and when you listen to the album, there’s nothing about it that resembles their original material. I refer you to Korn’s more recent albums.

This album will be hated by many Metallica purists, but no matter what they did, those people would hate this album no matter what it sounded like, but with an open mind, and having forgotten all about St. Anger (what album?) I find this a very wholesome and rewarding album that on it’s own merit, is very servicable.

Listen to this album: While riding a horse, wearing armour.

78%

Extracts from ‘It was just your life’, ‘All nightmare long’, ‘The Unforgiven’ and ‘My Apocolypse’

The Day That Never Comes from Death Magnetic

Testament – The Formation of Damnation

Like a hack saw to the back.

This album, takes the notion of thrash metal, turns it into rubber and twists it and stretches it. It’s stretched, but you let go and it springs back into shape. Going from sounding very similar to other thrash favourites, they jump across and pay a visit to other sub-genres of metal, including some death-metal style screaming before returning back to thrash their way through a few more songs. This is an epic, I was surprised when I found that the run time was only 49:40, I feel I’ve been here since the 80s.

They sound very much like an evil version of Metallica.

Testament are one of the heaviest metal bands out there and they are the only one who have continued to produce in this same form for this many years.

Listen to this album: While stood on a pedestal in the middle of a volcano.

Rating: 77%

Extracts from ‘More than meets the eye’, ‘The formation of damnation’, ‘Henchmen Ride’ and ‘Killing Season’