Soilwork – They were once labelled as a mediocre melodic death metal band, but things has happen since then.
Soilwork is now one of Sweden’s most respected extreme metal bands at the moment. From the beginning you can hear clear influences from melodic death metal bands such as
In Flames, and now they have a new and refreshing style of Gothenburg metal. Take
Dark Tranquillity, mix them with
The Haunted and then you add some
In Flames. Then you have an idea of how
Soilwork sounds like. Nothing extraordinary or revolutionary within the metal scene but they are a fine metal band.
Soilwork’s music is very heavy, extreme, somewhat technical/complex, half-melodic and catchy at times.
STABBING THE DRAMA, 2005
Strengths – One of
Soilwork’s greatest triumph cards is without a doubt the vocals of
Bjorn ‘’Speed’’ Strid. Here you have deep beast roars to harsh screaming to clean harmonized vocals; this creates a very varied vocal performance that adds texture and depth to the songs. More things that make this album great are the overall instrumental performances. There is a large variety of riffs, simplistic riffs, staccato riffing, intense riffs, technical riffs and more. Even if there are lots of different riffs you will still not experience anything that is 100% mind-blowing though. The bass is unfortunately almost non-existent and the drums have a great variety of drum patterns. Some blast beats, intense mid-paced patterns, double bass kicking and other sorts of catchy drum patterns. The song structure can both be a bad and a good thing, in this case the song variety is good but still not great. Most tracks have lots of heavy moments that are later changed into emotional melodic moments. This reduces the repetitiveness of the album, the only thing is if you like it or not.
Weaknesses –
Stabbing The Drama is a powerful metal album but there are some things that blocks it from being a great one. First of all I would like to point out the song structures. As I said, the song structures lower the level of repetitiveness but the songs are still a bit hard to digest. The tracks has a slight
Meshuggah touch, which means that some songs doesn’t have a good flow. Instead of flowing the songs has a staccato structure which makes the songs bumpy, imagine that you are driving off-road instead of driving at the highway. That’s the best way I can describe the tracks. Another thing that could lower the score of this album would be the vocals.
Bjorn tends to deliver more than he can handle at times, he has indeed a powerful singing voice but sometimes he delivers too much. One last thing that I think is bad is that both the bass and the keyboard are almost non-existent. The keyboard still provides a decent atmosphere to the songs but everything drowns because of the guitars, vocals and drums.
A refreshing Gothenburg metal album, some flaws but it of course all about personal taste. This might not be the best album they have done so far but it has some quality moments. The band has tight and solid musicianship plus a very powerful singer but they should work a little more on their songs. Even if they have found their own sound it wouldn’t be a bad thing if they could experiment a little bit. People who love Swedish death metal and extreme metal should check out
Soilwork. This album perhaps isn’t the best place to start at because it takes some time get used to the album.
Stabbing The Drama is a solid album, not a must-buy but it is worth a listen.
Recommended Tracks
--
Stalemate (
A non-stop aggression pack with awesome vocal work, it is catchy, intense, heavy and it has a solid structure.)
--
Blind Eye Halo (
Also a non-stop aggression injection, but this track has a death-like approach. Still catchy, extreme and it has some of the best vocals of the album.)
--
Stabbing The Drama – (
This track has both clean vocals and growls, the song has a somewhat complex structure with technical guitars but it is one of the better tracks.)
3/5
