Sacred Steel - The Bloodshed Summoning
With seven prior full-length albums and a handful of other releases (including a live LP) under their belt, I expected more from Sacred Steel. Album number eight, The Bloodshed Summoning, isn’t exactly a barnburner. The term “generic” seems to come up far too often when I have to describe this LP, and I really hate that I have to use it. Sacred Steel incorporated a lot of Thrash into their sound over the years and instead of distinguishing them further from the hordes of Power Metal bands out there, it made them even more bland. The vanilla Thrash riffs might go over better live, but on CD it doesn’t impress me. I seriously think that bands like Powermad, Redrum and Warfare D.C. had better recorded material. Those groups were obscure, to be sure, but their demo recordings and albums had one thing that Sacred Steel lacks: they remembered to kick ass. The music on The Bloodshed Summoning is flat-out boring and dull. And the vocals… Gerrit Mutz still hasn’t figured out the dynamics between Thrash and Power Metal. There is a time for growling and a time for melodic vocals. Knowing when to do one or the other is key to this style, and fucking it up is only forgivable on your debut album. This is album number eight and Gerrit botches things more than once. Between the unadventurous riffing and the poorly executed vocals, I couldn’t help but think that I was wasting my time listening to this LP. It doesn’t totally suck but it’s so “blah” that the disappointment you feel comes from hoping that things get better and then realizing that it isn’t going to happen.
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