The God Particle

I lost track of Attacker over the years, my last review being of The Unknown back in 2006 when I also did a cross-border trip to the U.S. the see the band live in New Jersey. Good times. I didn't like this new album, The God Particle, much on the first couple of listens. Several listens later, I'm still not fond of it, but I did find some stuff to like. First of all, I find the album kind of annoying. I like vocalist Bobby Lucas, but here it sounds like he's trying for a style closer to that of former Attacker vocalist Bob Mitchell, and it doesn't work very well. He comes off sounding screechy most of the time, and that's audible right from the start since the album starts with him screaming, "The seal is brooooken!" That hurts my ears. There are times when Bobby Lucas actually sounds like Bobby Lucas, and I wish he had stuck to that. I liked him a lot on Overlorde's Return of the Snow Giant 20 years ago, and he obviously still has that great voice. Moving on...

Musically, well, for one thing the vocals are very loud and sometimes it's hard to hear the music clearly, so occasionally some work is needed on the listener's part. There are some cool guitar riffs here and there and some crunchier parts are really cool. The drums are a bit uneven, sometimes pounding like there's no tomorrow, but often sounding "clickety" and kind of thin, getting buried by everything else. Too bad. Some stuff kills, like the first few seconds of "Stigmatized." It's not bad music overall, basically crunchy-ish heavy metal with some power metal overtones, but it's been done a lot before, and better. People are flooded by more music than any human being can possibly handle these days, and I don't see anything here to wow me away from new band "xyz" likely doing this better. I guess I expect more from such veterans of the scene than the quirks I found here. I'd still go on a road trip to see them live, though. ;)