Soulless - In Death’s Grip
When you’ve been listening to Metal as long as I have, you have lots of moments where you think you’ve heard a band before but you don’t remember them sounding like the album you’re currently listening to. Such is the case here. I could swear that I’ve heard Soulless before, but I thought that they were more in the Brutal Death Metal vein. In Death’s Grip is essentially a straight-out Thrash album. Of course, the reason I don’t remember Soulless sounding this way could be because I heard one of the fifty other bands (many of them still active) out there sporting the same name. This particular Soulless is from Ohio, and they have been active since 1997, having members that have been in a laundry list of other bands, ranging from The Spawn of Satan (Satanic Death Metal) to From the Depths(Black/Death Metal) to Son of Jor-El (Sludge/Thrash) to Mach II (Heavy Metal/Hard Rock) and just about everywhere in between. With a lineage like that, I was a bit disappointed in this album. I think a lot of the reason why was because I wanted things to get more brutal. The band members have plenty of Death Metal in their background and I kept thinking that they’d start bringing some of that into the Soulless sound, but they never took the next step from Slayer to Morbid Angel. Another thing I noticed while I was researching this band’s back catalog was that In Death’s Grip doesn’t really show any real progression from their previous LP, 2007’s Forever Defiant. You’re not getting anything that you haven’t already heard from Soulless before. This is still a very solid Thrash album, though. The playing is tight, and these guys know how to shred on their guitars. Maybe my expectations were a bit high for this. I’m an admittedly jaded Metal fan. I’ve been around the block so many times that they’ve named a street after me. I’m looking for something new and different, even if it’s just minor. Giving me more of the same, even if it’s good, tends to leave me feeling let down.
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