Ghost : "Impera"

 I liked the Swedish band's 2010 album "Opus Eponymous". It felt like they were ripping off both Mercyful Fate and Blue Oyster Cult with their wanna be Satanic rock. Sadly the three albums that followed each got more watered down. The rock elements slowly faded into something that sound more like Abba meets Aldo Nova. Their first album flirted with being metal, everything after shed all metallic ambition, and darkness. They kept the same image in fact milked it as a cash cow. Are they selling more albums now? Yes, but the "Fast and Furious" movies rake in cash and are mind numbing in their vapidness. This album doesn't offer much more hope. The first actual song and not the intro sounds like Weird Al jamming with Boston. The second song even worse, it is like a collision of Journey and Meatloaf. I cannot find anything redeeming about either. In truth they have sounded like a Barry Gibb solo album for some time, it's just getting worse. 

The guitar going into "Call Me Little Sunshine" is a little darker. It sounds more like Metallica covering "Hell's Bells" until it breaks down into the verse that sound more like Ratt when the producer shined them up good for Mtv. it's the best song so far. It's about as metal as Whitesnake.  Cock rock for dads on the golf course. "Hunter's Moon" has more guitar in the mix, but is not nearly aggressive enough to be called hard rock , much less metal.  Most people are not aware that the band Europe has other songs aside from "the Final Countdown". They did and " Watcher in the Sky"  sounds like Weird Al covering one of those. The chug is about as convincing as anything from Judas Priest's misstep into jazzercise on "Turbo". The first time they stumble into actual metal is thanks to Fredrik Akesson the guitarist from Opeth who guests on the  album with the song "Twenties". The entire song is not heavy it starts strong and loses gas.  

If you were to put every limp wristed trope ever used in the last decade of pop rock, it is in "Darkness at the Heart of my Love". You could not write a worse song if you tried. "Griftwood" sounds like Weird Al jamming with Van Hagar. The last song is darker but even then, the bar for darkness on this album is low so it's more on par with any of the power ballads from Def Leppard's "Hysteria" album.  I will give this album a 4, which might be the lowest score I have given anything in sometime. It is hard to imagine that there will be an album worse than this in terms of lack of originality, sometimes it is to the point of stealing. Anyone who thinks this is metal, has proven to be they do not know shit about shit and their mind would be better flushed down the same toilet this album belongs in.