However, the same goes with the following 8 tracks, and although songs as Distance and Observation Slave have outstanding choruses, it never feels superb. The verse is decent as it gets boring after times, but the chorus feels really exciting. The self-titled track starts out with a keyboard fading-in, before suddenly exploding with the full band to play a typical metal rhythm. There is nothing wrong with the rest of the album though. Dirk Verbeuren, the studio drummer, delivers technical death metal drumming with many great fills, not to mention tight rhythms. At last we have the drumming which is obviously the best of the band. I’m not kidding when I’m saying that if the bass would be left out, the sound would barely change.

The bass is even worse, the only part when you hear the bass is at the couplets of Observation Slave. Although the keyboard is obviously meant to give the songs more atmosphere, other than some intro’s, it does nothing to it. As I said, the keyboards and bass are almost non-existent. They’re distorted 99% of the time, but sometimes give a nice solo. The guitars barely always stick to low riffing that sounds like technical nu-metal riffing. The keyboards and bass are almost unhearable, while the vocals overtop everything.ījorn sounds very angsty when shouting but when he starts singing, it sounds very whiny. When mentioning the instrumentation, I feel that it’s very unbalanced. It’s always like that and never changes, which is very sad. The pre-chorus has a mixture of shouted and sung vocals and kick into the melodic chorus sung by Bjorn. Song starts with an instant kick of the verses screamed by Bjorn. They all bear the same exact formula with the exception of the last three songs. The foremost problem is the fact that all the songs sound similar. Creating too many fillers and only some one-hit wonders. It’s however sad that the thought of making a commercial album redeemed the fun-factor of the songs. While others remained to stick with melodies, Soilwork took a more commercial step with the easy constructed songs. Along with bands as In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and At The Gates, Soilwork expanded the melodic feel of metal. Soilwork is a melodic death metal (so it seems…) from Sweden. But why am I talking of genre’s, it’s Soilwork I have to discuss. Although the vocals do give us a melodic taste, the instruments mainly stick to low riffing, being more Metalcore and Nu-metal.

These however are not cheesy, which makes it non related to power metal bands. The foremost sign is the melodies guitars and vocals take during the songs.

Although not really related to the death metal genre, it shows some similarities.

Soilwork stabbing the drama rarbg