The most interesting releases of the week!
To the shock of no one, you’ll get exactly what you see on the tin. Avenge The Fallen is HammerFall‘s thirteenth full-length album, released on Nuclear Blast. And yes, you’ll get lightning flying out of a hammer as it violently blasts the ground when swung by a burly man in a cape while surrounded by his pals. This is power metal for the glorious, and as you listen to Avenge The Fallen, you’ll feel yourself standing in a crowd of thousands screaming along. This is the apex of gym music for people who study fantasy maps.
The biggest issue I have with Avenge The Fallen is that the build-up is lacking. You don’t get the excellent build-up of tension with an intense explosion as the storm clouds clear that you get on the best albums by bands like Rhapsody Of Fire or Helloween. The verses just sort of chug along, then you get hit with a big chorus, solo, or breakdown. While the individual parts are good, that overall flow that the genre’s best can give is absent. However, that’s very much an after-the-fact complaint. When I’m listening to Avenge The Fallen, all I care about are the excellent bridges and choruses. The big moments hit hard, which makes Avenge The Fallen a great success.
Free Ride makes music for the heat death of the universe. You listen to this when you’re gasping with thirst, staring at a sun-scoured waste, dreaming of the ocean on the album cover, seeing the skull on the cover. You get some good riffs to go along with your predicament. Acido Y Puto was released on Small Stone recordings.
Acido Y Puto isn’t difficult music. It isn’t fancy. This consists simply of fuzzy desert rock at moderate tempos and with a moderate groove. I find myself sinking into this music and getting lost in the vibes. My heartrate goes down in the process. The guitar work on this album is fantastic, as are the rest of the performances, but focusing on technical proficiency misses the point. An album for forgetting about your day. Fans of older Elder who want something more relaxed and less metal will enjoy.
Shockingly, Oxygen Destroyer have given us something ridiculous. The band’s third full-length release, Guardian Of The Universe comes from Redefining Darkness Records. If you heard their first two albums, you know the drill here: Death/thrash with everything louder than everything else. They’ve managed to up the absurdity on this release, with everything at maximum all the time. This is the apex of gym music for anyone who scoffed and clicked away when I said the same thing about Hammerfall up above.
Oxygen Destroyer‘s problem has never been their songwriting or performances. The band knows what they’re doing, and they do that one thing extremely well. On Guardian Of The Universe, they seem to turned into the skid. The big problem I had with Sinister Monstrosities is that the albums sank with repeat listens. Maybe Guardian Of The Universe will follow the same patterns, but the band has made their third album a more entertaining release by shedding any glimmer of serious music that they had. The promo compares this to Reign In Blood, and I get the comparison.
Ulver, Fellowship, Defeated Sanity, Nekus, Nepenthe
