Danish
Mercenary have aimed high with their latest release, The Hours that Remain. With a near-perfect production, competent musicians and some great songs, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Mercenary go back some years now and have used the mix between clean vocals and growling vocals for a long time. When this is used correctly, it brings a lot of diversity to the music, in this way the band is able to create emotional parts followed by powerful heavy parts which can create very dynamic music. Some bands take this approach to the extreme ending up with a beauty-and-the-beast sound.
Mercenary had a potential problem when bassist and growler Kral left the band just before the recording of The Hours that Remain. Clean singer Mikkel Sandager stepped up to the challenge and did a lot of screaming on the album. There isn't a lot of deep growling on the album, but here and there you'll find one, probably from guest musicians Björn 'Speed' Strid of
Soilwork and Marcus Bischoff of Heaven Shall Burn.
As mentioned before, the production is about as good as it gets. With the recording, production and mixing done by Jacob Hansen and the mastering by Ziggy, the sound could be compared to the latest releases of
Nevermore and Arch Enemy, both mastered by Andy Sneap, or possibly something out of Sweden like the latest Dimmu Borgir,
Evergrey or Scar Symmetry. Everything is clean and heavy with drums and vocals standing out, guitars nice and gritty with keyboard walls to back up the rest. It's just good to be a music lover these days when good production can lift the music to another level.
The first thing that the new listener will notice is how damn melodic this album is. The clean vocals create one beautiful melody after another, here and there mixed with some good screams. But that only helps to increase the impact of the melodic parts, which is probably the whole idea.
Comparing to the two earlier albums Everblack and 11 Dreams, the compositions have improved. The heavy songs have become heavier with some pretty cool riffs to support them. Hats off to keyboarder Morten Sandager for backing up the riffs with his melodic playing. Also drummer Mike Park has a finger in the heavier direction. He has some nice and heavy double bass drumming in a lot of parts.
This is a great metal album. Incredibly melodic and well played. I do miss some more growling and more heavy parts, but that's to be expected since I mostly listen to death and black these days. However, the fact that this record has been able to grab me as much as it did, should tell you something about how catchy this thing is. And I haven't even mentioned the solos. Even some of the ballads have parts that I like and I'm not much of a ballad-guy. What
Mercenary serve with The Hours that Remain is a nice mix of old thrash/death influences and a lot of melodic parts which works really well.
Written by
Tajs Tuesday, November 7, 2006
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