Thursday, January 29, 2015

The Band That Made Power Death Worthwhile

A big part of maturing as a metal fan, and probably a music fan in general, is learning the art forgiveness. The doctrine of metal orthodoxy clearly states: You are only as trve as your latest record. In other words, if one album sucks, then by extension the band's entire catalog is now tainted.

This is obviously stupid but it was a sentiment I held on to for years, one that probably peaked with Immortal's super lame comeback album, All Shall Fall. It was years before I could spin Pure Holocaust or Sons of Northern Darkness again. All because of the legacy, man. But over the past few years, I've begun to re-discover some of my early, spurned loves, and the joy we once shared together.

In my nascent metal years I was a pretty big Soilwork fan. I devoured their first few albums like a child discovering extreme sour candy. The Chainheart Machine, A Predator's Portrait, and Natural Born Chaos were perfect gateway albums into the world of extreme metal. They were fast and nimble but featured plenty of grooves and those BIG ROCK moments the mind needs to gain a footing on a new sonic landscape.

But as it turns out, the band and I were headed in opposite directions. While I went deeper into the world of death and black metal, they became a pretty shitty pop metal band, overstuffed with self-serious cleanly-sung choruses and glassy electronics. And while that stuff still sucks (Figure Number Five has a few cool moments but is still mostly awful), my new attitude dictated that I give their old stuff a try.

Soilwork never quite fit into the melodic death metal scene that spawned them. Yes, they had the slashing twin guitar attack and the mid-range rasp of Björn "Speed" Strid, and when they wanted to, like on "Millionflame," they could execute the melodic death metal blueprint perfectly, but they were always overflowing with power metal cheese. It oozed out between the seams in the form of keyboards and the fun, flailing solos of Ola Frenning and Peter Wichers. They laid the groundwork for the mid-aughts plague of power pop death led by groups like Scar Symmetry and Mercenary, but there was a wild spontaneity and willingness to play around. Check out the nearly two-minute solo break in "Machinegun Majesty," featuring some bizarre guitar work courtesy of Swedish rock guitar wizard Mattias Ia Eklundh.

Everything comes together on "Follow the Hollow," the first song on the Devin Townsend-produced Natural Born Chaos. It's all here, a melodic thrash riff that cuts and drives with wild abandon, the catchy chorus, the sweeping keys... It was a wild album, brimming with weird ideas and knick knacks like the organ on "Black Star Deceiver," and half of it really didn't work, but it was creative high point for the power death genre. This sound would be heard again a few years later but drenched in millennial self-pity and perfectly packaged into total impotence (see: Sonic Syndicate). It was all downhill from here, for the band and the genre as a whole. But I'm glad I can still enjoy this.

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