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SOILWORK: "Stabbing the Drama"           soilwork                                        Nuclear Blast

     Wait until the sun is out before listening. 

    For me, this was a very hard album to listen to at first. When most American Soilwork fans listen to new Soilwork material we tend to compare it to their best work, which of course is “Natural Born Chaos.” For me, it took four or five times of listening to it and bringing it to a different part o the country with different (and warmer) climate to understand exactly what was going with this CD. This album is not to be compared to any other Soilwork album. It can’t, it doesn’t sound anything like it’s predecessors so I am still confused on what to think of this CD. In a side note, I’d like to point out that this is the first album in which Henry Ranta doesn’t play on drums.

            On the first track, “Stabbing the Drama,” Speed is sounding a lot like Phil Anselmo! The guitars are just punishing and so are the drums! This is genuine article Soilwork material that no one could mistake! Keys, guitar, bass everything was there and in full force. A great opening song with lots of gate work (for all you engineers) on the guitars make it almost sound like an old-school Fear Factory song. Of course, Speed goes melodic in this song as he does in all the other songs. However the next rack,” One With Flies,” starts out really weird…there’s noise then you hear “For the very last time!” then it gets rocking…then breaks into this really weird mood that it almost feels that melodic death metal is treading new waters and it’s almost scaring me! If that sentence doesn’t make sense to you, I can’t blame you! This song doesn’t sound anything like Soilwork, it almost sounds…mainstream. Heaven forbid! Luckily for them, “Weapon of Vanity” fires back with faster guitars and double kick drums. It is in this song, where I could tell that Soilwork has been influenced somehow by American metal. This songs vocal-work sounds like American singers do in bands like Killswitch Engage or some other mainstream metal band. The guitars are very melodic and surprising the drum-work is very good! As a song, this song is probably my favorite but it doesn’t seem like a Soilwork song. “Nerve” is a very dark sounding track yet Speeds vocals are high pitched when he sings melodically. The band goes from one feeling to another in this song, one minute it’s dark, one minute it’s confusing, and another minute I feel everything is alright. Very complex! The chorus is VERY catchy! Punishing guitar and drum riffs ale’ Fear Factory with Speeds Melodic singing. As I go through the tracks, I am noticing that every other song has a fast melodic death metal track then the other songs have this mainstream feeling to them. If this were any other band I’d say this is a pretty damn good CD, but as a Soilwork CD…it’s hard to say.

            For a Daniel Bergstrand CD, it wasn’t bad. I usually think of him as the guy who turned In Flames’  into a shitty sounding band. He usually does more harm than good on drum mixes. This time, he didn’t do so bad. The overall quality of the mix was above average. The vocals couldn’t have sounded better in the mix; the drums are about as what they should sound like with the exception of the cymbals. The guitars screamed as they do on the other CD’s and I could hear the bass. What more could I ask? I am worried that Soilwork is getting softer sounding as there careers get better and better but we must never lose faith! This is a great CD worth having in the collection. A word of advice, wait until the sun is out and it is a bit warmer before listening. When I got this CD, it was snowing and it was very cold, dark and miserable. When I got this CD in a warmer climate with the sun out, Stabbing The Drama sounded a million times better. This CD has many layers worth exploring and is worth studying for a long time in terms of overall feeling of the CD and in the mix itself.

rating: 9/10

Matthew Haumschild

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