Graveworm
Collateral Defect
7.1
Synopsis:
After lambasting this band’s last effort, (Nu)topia, I braced myself for yet another god awful cyber goth industrial teabagging from these once promising Dimmu Borgir worshiping Italians. Well, they must have taken my last review to heart.
Review:
Well of course, Graveworm didn’t read my (Nu)topia review and say “Oh Sheeet, Erika Thomas, he no lika our last album, we musta maka better album”, (thinking that way helps me sleep at night), but I’ll be damned if Collateral Defect isn’t a vast improvement over (Nu)topia.
What we have here is a stern mix of excellently produced death and black metal littered with synths and far less cyber programming and goth injections, headed by vocalist Stephan Fiori, who puts in a hell of a performance, especially with his lower register growls. Admittedly, even with more of a focus of death metal crunch, and the band being far less of a Dimmu Borgir clone than they were in there career, the band still have a few overtly goth leanings (i.e. “Suicide Code”, “Fragile Side”), though far less sugary and commercial than (Nu)Topia.
Still though, for a synth laced death/black metal album on Nuclear Blast, Collateral Defect is pretty damn solid, though certainly not elite. At times it is surprisingly aggressive such, as opener “Bloodwork”, “Out of Clouds” and “Touch of Hate” and contains plenty of mid tempo, crunchy riffs like “Scars of Sorrow” and “The Day I Die” that are satisfying if a bit generic.
As with the cover songs that graced Engraved In Black and (Nu)Tupia ( REM's "Losing My Religion", and Pet Shop Boy's "Its a Sin" ) in some some or other, an odd cover song graces the album, this time in the form of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need a Hero”. I’ll let that sink in for a bit…..
So, Graveworm appear to have responded with a pretty solid album that should see them continue to hover around the upper echelon of the second tier of black/death metal, but nothing more or nothing less.
Related
Graveworm[N]Utopia
1/11/2005