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Volbeat: Beyond hell / above heaven

12/11/10 || Trauma

Volbeat’s a pretty unique group in this day and age. Also pretty successful at being unique. I can’t think of too many groups that mix together oldies rock, country, and metal in the same way or quite as good. Granted, there will be failures by default (“Guitar gangsters and Cadillac blood”, anyone?), but they have their share of successes and when they succeed they do so in an amazing fashion.

“Beyond hell / above heaven” (they have some of the dumbest album names, truly) starts off strong with “The mirror and the ripper”, and from there the album becomes pretty spotty. For me that was a bummer, but only because I went into their back catalogue and was introduced to the greatness that is their debut and “Rock the rebel metal the devil”. I could have seen it coming with “Guitar gangsters…” if I had listened in chronological order, but this is how it went, so deal with it. A much more poppy go around, “Beyond hell…” is. I can appreciate that in a lot of ways, I really can. What I begin to not appreciate so much is when things sound kinda the same.

Lemme put it to you this way, if my mother is going to say that every song sounds the same with music that’s poppy with happy choruses and phrasings, then they sound the same. There’s no blast beats clouding her nearing elder ears. So there you go. My mother kicks ass, by the way.

After “Who they are” I get a little lost in what they’re trying to do up until “7 shots” with Mille from Kreator. It took some time to get used to that tune, as I hated it at first, but it’s a good one in the end. “16 dollars” is my fave tune on this album. The one with the heaviest Elvis influence which I dig immensely, it’s very up-tempo, kinda showcasing the vocals: how he does his lows and very fast singing with sometimes unintelligible lines that sound like “weebleweeblow boogywoogy woo”, or something like that.

I do like the vocals. They are the highpoint of this band, and they have been lucky to have a great production going on, if a bit inconsistent this go around.

I’m going to air the grievances now. This album tries to do too much. The underlying style of each tunes seems to alternate or change between songs, and can feel like it’s trying to throw you off. They go from rock to metal to rock to oldies to punk to rock to metal to metal to punk… it doesn’t feel like they took much time to arrange the placement of tunes. Sometimes it can work, but here’s why I think it fails more than it succeeds: melodies. They use the same melody over and over. Maybe with a slight change here and there, but it’s like they decided to keep the basic shape and change a couple positions or something. I can’t blame them for being lazy because I’m definitely lazy, but after repeated listens it becomes a problem. A problem that I despise more, as I want to like an album the more I listen to it, not the other way around. Also, the Barney tune. It’s going to get the most press, so let’s talk about it briefly, here. It’s not bad, not at all, but its placement in the tracklist and kind of awkwardness mixed with the chorus makes it difficult to keep the tightening in your pants, if you catch my drift.

In all, not bad, but they could have done way better. And I know they can.

6,5

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Mascot
Website: www.volbeat.dk
Band
Michael Poulson: vocals, guitar
Thomas Bredahl: guitar
Anders Kjølholm: bass
John Larsen: drums

Tracklist
01. The mirror and the ripper
02. Heaven nor hell
03. Who they are
04. Fallen
05. A better believer
06. 7 shots
07. A new day
08. 16 dollars
09. A warriors call
10. Magic zone
11. Evelyn
12. Being 1
13. Thanks

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