Vicious
Vile, Vicious & Victorious
6.4
Coming from Sweden, Vicious play hardcore-tinged songs with a fair amount of melody with the same thrash spirit as bands like Carnal Forge and The Haunted. Big shock there. But something about the songs Vicious write set them a bit apart from the aforementioned bands. Everything's a little less rushed and played at more of a medium pace. Perhaps a bit more akin to Corporation 187.
It's that melodic thrash you've come to expect from Sweden only played with far more in the style of metalcore. Nothing more, nothing less. Henke Wenngren (Skyfire) handles the vocal duties and does an exceptional job, proving that it's actually possible to have a pretty good range while yelling your head off. There's a lot of impressive guitarwork and great riffing at times, but I'd almost say they have the dangerous tendency to take things a little too far with some of the leads. Things sort of bounce back and forth between a hard/metalcore verse and melodic leads throughout the choruses. The drumming is pretty standard, solid but not amazing. With a lot of starts and stops, they maintain a pretty upbeat and consistent tempo. It's by no means an experimental album, as everything's really formulaic. One thing I'm really pleased by is the fact at how audible the bass is. The basswork isn't anything that anyone's going to be blown away by, but it's really steady and makes the songs sound infinitely fuller. I'm so sick of every fucking album where I read there's a bassist in the liner notes, yet, there's no evidence on the recording.
Throughout most of it, I'm unimpressed, but then I'm surprised on tracks like "Life Corrupted" and "The Feeder of Evil" which really have a lot of the energy that the rest of the album lacks. They'll just move from these high energy parts to these chugging parts which really don't contribute anything positive other than making me long for the faster riffs again. I don't know what else to say - it's your typical Swedish thrash with more hardcore leanings. Hell, it's even recorded at the Underground Studios, where Carnal Forge, Terror 2000, and Ebony Tears all did albums.
Clocking in at a mere 35 minutes, Vicious really wasn't able to keep my attention even for that amount of time. It's not bad, though - I've just heard it all....thirty times. Had Vile, Vicious, & Victorious come out five years ago, I'm confident that I'd be flipping out over it. Unfortunately, I just don't hear a lot of creativity. Despite the lack of innovation, the songs are well structured and tightly executed, leaving me no choice but to give the album a decent score. Still, I'm counting on their next album to destroy this one.
