MARTYRDÖD : " List"

The Swedes are back with their 6th album. It kicks the door down and starts biting you like a rabid dog. There is more of a punk feel to the title track. A folk tinged guitar melody surfaces over the other wise ranging storm as they charge in head first once again.  The guitar solos over the straight ahead attack are really the only thing that is different when we get to "Wipeout" . It all becomes a blur until I realize that we are on the 5th song. The vocals stay in the same static bark and the tempo thrashes with unrelenting gusto, but this eventually begins to make the album sound a little one dimensional. Guitar melodies that at one time might have gotten my attention, begin to all sound the same.

"Harmagedon" gives a little more breathing room, but this is pretty marginal. Many of these songs begin to feel like they are place holders for the guitar solo. Without question the guitars are the focal point of this album. The drums come in at second place with bass and vocals almost obligatory. The one melodic guitar break is really just an interlude. The tempo doesn't change until "Transmission, which is the last song and then it's only in sections they can restrain themselves to muster for ten to twenty seconds here and there.

Overall lack of dynamics is what hampers this album. it feels like while adding a more melodic range of guitar melodies they have taken a step forward and two steps back by not supplementing these with a more diverse range of tempos. Sure I get the fact that this is d-beat, but if you are so stuck in your punk roots that you can't switch things up it's a problem. I review all kinds of music here, so fast doesn't phase me if it is done in the proper context. I like my share of punk bands, but the ones I am into know at the end of the day it's songs that matter. I'll give this album a 5 as the band has stepped it up in terms of guitar playing,so that is there is that is all you are looking for fast mean riffs, for me a need a little more.