release date: Apr. 9, 2013
format: digital
[album rate: 2,5 / ] [2,74]
producer: Robert Caggiano & Volbeat; Jacob Hansen
label: Vertigo - nationality: Denmark
Track highlights: 2. "Pearl Hart" - 3. "The Nameless One" - 5. "Cape of Our Hero"
5th studio album by Volbeat follows 2½ years after Beyond Hell / Above Heaven (Sep. 2010) is the band's first not to be with Jacob Hansen as only producer. In fact he is "only" credited as co-producer and the album being produced by Robert Caggiano (guitarist of Anthrax) together with Volbeat. The line-up has changed with Caggiano also replacing Thomas Bredahl as lead guitarist. The album is the band's final with bassist Anders Kjølholm, who left the band in 2015.
Slowly, and almost unnoticed these guys have become the biggest international Danish act. They haven't changed much but they have distilled what they do the best. Soundwise, this may be on another level, but I don't really think, it's their best. Some would probably say that this is their most popular heavy metal or their most alternative metal-shaped album so far. The style copies their successful 2010-album with a few tracks with hints of alt. country, which doesn't make it much better. Too many tracks are simply not my taste and there's too much headbanging heavy metal, but overall, I may be a small improvement.
Not recommended.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
