Pansar
(Iron, Blood And Death Corporation)
34:28min
Fourth full-length album for the Swedish combo BULLETSIZE, after more than ten years of activity. They never drastically changed the style they had chosen in late 2006, when Niklas Gidlund (drums) and Andreas Persson (guitars and vocals) quit the old Heavy Metal project METAL WINGS to start the new one, more Thrash oriented. The whole songwriting has precise connections to the AT THE GATES and THE CROWN sound, huge influence for many younger Metal bands from Sweden and other parts of the world. So, ‘Pansar’ is nothing but another instance of melodic Thrash / Death Metal. The first three songs, ‘F T W’, ‘Abomination’ and ‘Legion Of Chaos’, show their good instrumental skills, above all the use of double bass drums of Gidlund and the guitar solos of Kjell Berg but I struggled to find brilliant ideas and successful riffs, that follow one another in a very dull form. Then, ‘Genocide’ slightly breaks this progress, being shorter, less than two minutes, and straight to the point. ‘In The Front We Die’ starts in the same way but continues with a wider progression of riffs, turning out to be the best track of the album in my opinion. ‘Enslaved Humanity’ has again the typical Swedish mark, these guys surely love bands like THE HAUNTED, DEFLESHED and CARNAL FORGE, but with ‘Blackhole Village’ they prove how strong the melodic influence of acts like ARCH ENEMY or DIMENSION ZERO is. ‘Victims’ closes the album with a long instrumental song, full of triplets, melody and inconsistency. I can’t hide my negative point of view, most of the tracks here are boredom and nothing more, also big fans of the mentioned bands will hardly find something interesting in ‘Pansar’. Everything, from the modern production to the war-themed concept is very expected, maybe it could be trendier fifteen or twenty years ago, but nowadays it’s simply outdated. More information at www.facebook.com/bulletsize and www.facebook.com/ibdc666
David Lucido