Not to be confused with Vision Divine.
This second album from Violent Divine,
'In Harm's Way' is produced and mixed by
Hammerfall guitarist, Pontus Norgren, ex of The Poodles, Talisman, Zan Clan, with connections to many other bands of note.
The publicity of course focuses on the
Hammerfall connection. Violent Divine's music is closer to that than any other band on Norgren's CV.
Well, okay, that may not be strictly true. There's a wealth of gleaming, melodic hard rock here. Most of the time though, it's only revealed in glimpses, shining through the seismic shifts in the album's heavy metal stylings.
The sonically satisfying results are evidenced by '
In Harm's Way's cutting edge heavy rock, loud, proud and sturdily tuneful.
There are plenty of respectful nods to classic metal, exercising good judgement in picking only the best bits from influences like Ozzy,
Accept and
Motley Crue to emulate.
And it starts immediately, with explosive opener '
Let Them Burn's short, riffy bursts of metal axework, clanging lead guitar and densely packed chorus.echoes too of the Poodles' commercially accessible pop metal here.
First single release, '
Blackheart' has much more of a contemporary sound - sounding a little like
Carmen Gray - with growling, low slung guitars and pounding, bass heavy rhythms accelerating into a breathless, torqued up chorus.
From time to time, as you move from track to track, a sense of sameness creeps in. But thankfully, a startling axe solo or an exhilaratingly melodic middle eight generally succeeds in blowing the band back on course.
Best example is the album's halfway point. '
Love Is Divine' is a workmanlike track, nothing more, but it is bookended by the hard driving, funky metal groove of '
I Am' and the haunting, spiralling - vaguely Nirvana like - modern melodic metal of '
End Of Times', a genuinely standout track.
'Days Of Sorrow' really captures that contemporized classic metal sound, grabbing chunks of granite hard seventies rock and percolating these through a 21
st century mixing desk. It also serves as yet another example of the band's winning mindset, If you combine a hard, frequently aggressive rock/metal sound with a keen understanding of the elemental power of melody, then you won't go far wrong.
Unarguably, they've come close to perfecting that approach with
'In Harms Way'.
Written by
Brian Thursday, February 26, 2009
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