Band: Soilwork
CD: The Panic Broadcast
Label: Nuclear Blast
Released: 2010
With fourteen years and seven albums under their belt,
you might think that Soilwork would be nearing the point in their career when
they could finally relax and enjoy the fruits of their success. It is precisely
that kind of thinking however, that has left other bands in the wake of this
Helsingborg, Sweden-based, six
piece.
On the heals of their hugely successful album, 2007’s
Sworn to a Great Divide, as well as their recent inclusion on Iron Man 2:
The Video Game, the band announces the release of their latest effort, The
Panic Broadcast.
The Panic Broadcast
consist of ten songs forged in the classic Soilwork mold of brutal rhythms,
soaring guitar work, and the signature vocal styling’s of front man Bjorn
"Speed" Strid. From the slow and melodic, to the bludgeoning and vicious, the
disk runs the gambit of human emotion. The stand-out (and this writer’s vote for
the first single) is track two: Two Lives Worth of Reckoning, with a cranial
quality that sets it slightly above the rest.
In a haze of bands combining two drastically different
vocal styles in a cheap attempt to fish for fans with varying taste, very few do
it because it is right. Soilwork is among those amazing few, and The
Panic Broadcast is overwhelming evidence of that fact.
