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Bolt Thrower: Mercenary

31/08/07 || theProphet

I have, and will always have a special place in my heart for this release, it being one of two albums that brought me into the almighty genre of musick known as death metal (the other one, Incapacity’s “Chaos Complete”, will be reviewed sometime soon). Bear this in mind as I recount this little anecdote of pure metal passion:

The other day I was sitting around, surfing the net while listening through a random playlist of almost my entire musick library. I was just reading an article about the wonderful movie “Army of Darkness” (if you haven’t seen it… seriously man, what the fuck?) when suddenly, the opening riff of “Mercenary” (the track, not the album) started sounding through my speakers. And everything just stopped, the best movie ever suddenly was turned in to a mere distraction from things of superior greatness, and I felt a sharp pain in my chest and a lump began to form in my throat. It took me a moment to realize that I was actually crying. Silently, of course, but still. Who the fuck starts to cry from a death metal riff? I’ll tell you who does: a real lumberjack of a man.

I think everyone can understand that this review will not be the least sentimental, and that I will keep it professional and objective.

When it comes to Bolt Thrower, you know you will get nothing but good stuff, and this album is no exception. Groovy death metal perfection from the very first chords to the final fucking fade-out. I think it has been stated in another review that on a Bolt Thrower album, the first riff often tells alot about what to expect. And man, does the opening riff in “Zeroed” raise expectations… In fact, the only thing it manages to raise even more is my gnarled, erected meat-staff. And it continues, there’s no point in ranting about the utter greatness of every single song, so I will narrow it down to the absolute highlights of the album (these are the tracks that will top hell’s top-10-hit-list. Forever.), the aforementioned opening track would also belong here.

The title track is to your ears what lubrication is to your ass during a gang rape, nothing seems more important at the moment. It is simply some real piece of mid-tempo (what else would one expect?) death metal art. The riff at 0:40 is to die for, as is pretty much every other riff in the entire song. “Powder Burns”, starts of like a couple of other Bolt Thrower songs, most recently “The Killchain” on “Those Once Loyal”, and this opening turns into YET ANOTHER FUCKING KILLER RIFF. This band is really a hit machine if I ever saw one. Last, but not least, we get “Sixth Chapter” which starts out with a riff not totally different from the opening riff in “The IVth Crusade”, and by the way, that’s just another way of saying “I’M CUMMING” (seriously, I start humming that riff when I do).

However, there’s a few annoying trifles that prevents this disc from getting TEH PERFECT SCORE (now, before anyone of you think “well, it’s not perfection like you stated before then, is it?”. I just want to take this opportunity to say: FUCK YOU!). First off, the bass is inaudible, as is unfortunately what to expect on all BT releases until “Those Once Loyal” (now that is the bass of them gods).

Also, the slow pace of most BT songs makes the album pretty hard to listen to in one sitting. It is like being run over by a battle tank and grinded to dust, which is good. It’s only that then the dust tends to be grinded into air. Then the battle tank of Bolt Thrower continues to drive back and forth on the spot where the happy reviewer once stood for another fifteen minutes. However, this is more like a semi-problem as this album delivers enough hits for you to be satisfied with just listening to them one at a time.

Despite these little glitches in the war machine that is Bolt Thrower, this album is a gem. To me it is BT’s best effort so far, and everyone that don’t own them all have no right to call themselves death metal fans in my book. Fuck, I should have put this one here in the Class6(66) section.

8,5 tear-eyed-yet-dominating reviewers out of 10.

Information
Released: 1998
Label: Metal Blade
Website: www.boltthrower.com
Band
Karl Willets: vocals
Baz Thomson: guitars
Gavin Ward: guitars
Jo Bench: bass
Alex Thomas: drums

Tracklist
01. Zeroed
02. Laid to Waste
03. Return From Chaos
04. Mercenary
05. To the Last…
06. Powder Burns
07. Behind Enemy Lines
08. No Guts, No Glory
09. Sixth Chapter

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