HOME   

SOILWORK

"The Ride Majestic" 

Nuclear Blast Records

Review by Matthew Haumschild

1.    The Ride Majestic 2.    Alright in the Aftermath 3.    Death in General 4.    Enemies in Fidelity 5.    Petrichor by Sulphur 6.    The Phantom 7.    The Ride Majestic (Aspire Angelic) 8.    Whirl of Pain 9.    All Along Echoing Paths 10.  Shining Lights 11.  Father and Son, Watching the World Go Down 12.  Of Hollow Dreams 13.  Ghosts and Thunder

Line up

Soilwork is: Bjorn Speed Strid, Dirk Verbeuren, Sylvain Coudret, David Andersson, Sven  Karlsson, and Markus Wiborn.

Every track is well-constructed

It took me a few listens before I began to like this album. Everyone knows how much I adore this band and at first I was disappointed in this effort. I was looking for another song that sounded like one of the band’s signature-aggressive track that makes the pit go nuts when it's played live such as, "Follow the Hollow," or "Long Live the Misanthrope."  However, I could not find one no matter how many times I listened to it. This presents a problem, could Soilwork come out with their first bad album? In reality, it does happen with every band. Every band puts out an album that isn’t very good and after 10 or 11 albums it’s bound to happen.     

            The good news:

            The more I listened to the album, the more I began to like it. If you’re looking for all-out aggression like Stabbing The Drama it’s not exactly apparent on this album, instead the album is a lot more melodic. “Death in General” and “Petrichor by Sulphur” are by far the most melodic songs on the album. For once, Soilwork creates a song that’s kind of sad, “Father and Son, Watching the World Go Down” I’m still trying to decide if it’s a good song or not.

            One of the other things I’ve noticed throughout the whole album is the drumming: Dirk Verbeuren is a master drummer. There are very few that could even match his skill and it’s jus ta pleasure listening to him work, that being said, he is way too aggressive on this album. It sounds strange, but for the melodic parts he’s playing these super fast blast beats that strangely kinda fit the song. Instead of playing a more a of a traditional drum beat, throughout the whole album, it seems like he’s doing his own thing which isn’t bad or anything…just kind of odd. I’ve never listened to album with this kind of drumming. I would say it’s complementary if anything else but…just so strange. “Alright in the Aftermath” sounds like it’s that aggressive song I was looking for, but the guitars say otherwise and it’s common throughout the whole album, the song gives off the illusion of being aggressive because the drumming is going a thousand kilometers per hour. 

            Overall, is this album a disappointment? A little bit. It would be very hard to follow up The Living Infinite which was such a great album, The Ride Majestic is a very melodic album that does grow on the listener after while. Every song has excellent arrangements and if you’re looking on listening to something in the car casually, this a great album for that. I won’t say it’s a great album to work out to unless you like going for long runs outside in the autumn. There’s a lot of good songs on this album and every track is well-constructed, I just feel that it isn’t a great album. The band might just be maturing as every member is hitting around the 40 year-old mark and aggression might not be as high as a priority as it once was and I cannot blame them for that.

8/10

PO Box 137 - CH 5443 Niederrohrdorf  

Postfach 201367 - D Waldshut- Tiengen

© GryphonMetal.ch 2015 -  Niederrohrdorf - Switzerland