Resolution

Lamb of God is back with a new studio album after a huge tour in support of their previous album “Wrath”. Whereas the previous album was rather rough sounding with some thrashy edges, this new album sees Lamb of God returning to the sound that made them well known in the first place. On this new release you'll find tracks that will surely remind you of “As The Palaces Burn”, “Ashes of the Wake”, and “Sacrament”. Nevertheless, 2012's “Resolution” also sees the Richmond-based metal formation explore new territories of heavy music.

Let's start of with the experimental edge of Resolution. Probably one of the best examples of Lamb of God's experimentation is unleashed upon us as soon as we start listening to this cd. The first track starts off with frontman Randy Blythe taking a deep breath and unleashing his roaring voice over an extremely filthy, slow sludge riff, which is something we are not very used to from Lamb of God. Of course, they've had slow-paced songs in the past (such as 2003's “Vigil” and 2004's “Omerta”), but none of these tracks were as sludge-like as album opener “Straight for the Sun”, which is almost good enough to be compared with sludge titans such as Crowbar and Eyehategod. I was blown away by this extremely heavy opening track since I love it when a band successfully tries something different.

Other experiments include Randy's clean vocals on “Insurrection”. As far as I know this is the very first time that Randy Blythe did a clean and melodic kind of vocal for a Lamb of God track. He does this very accurate and the double-tracked vocals (a deep voice and a higher cleaner voice) are mixed very well, which is of course a compliment to producer Josh Wilbur. Besides these two examples, there's also the epic and ambient “King Me” and silent/heavy contrasting “The Number Six”. These kinds of tracks might surprise the average Lamb of God fan.

Overall, Resolution sees the groove metal band return to its signature sound. Typical riffs such as the chorus riff of “Ghost Walking” shows much similarity to Sacrament's “Redneck”. “The Undertow” must remind you of “As The Palaces Burn”-like songwriting. It pleases me to realize that this band actually has a signature sound that made them what they are and I believe they should be given the space to showcase their sound. Unoriginality wouldn't be the right term to describe this for they are just doing what they're good at.

The album is well-produced. It sounds much more solid than Wrath, but thankfully not as overproduced as Sacrament did. Drums sound solid as usual. Of course the bass drums are triggered as usual. I'm sure a lot of people will have complaints about the fact Chris Adler uses this, but I personally think it fits Lamb of God's polished sound. I don't believe it shows the laziness of the hairy drummer. Sometimes I get the feeling the vocals are a bit low on volume in the mix. Besides these kind of minor details, the album sounds rock solid.

Lyric-wise, I am always very impressed by Randy and I was once again not disappointed by the words written by this noisy frontman. The Bible references and political edges to his lyrics have always been great in my opinion, and you shall find his signature kind of lyrics once again on Resolution. The track “Invictus” is lyrically my favorite so far.

To wrap it up, this album is just kickass. Though I think it won't be a classic like Ashes Of The Wake, it sure as hell is a great addition to Lamb of God's discography. Fans of the Virginian band who are in for some experiments and also love the traditional LoG-sound will surely get what they wished for. I was impressed by this record. Lamb of God remains the same old great band and at the same time they try things they've not played or recorded before and do it with great style. No doubt that this release will end up in a lot of top-metal-album-lists at the end of the year!

Now probably many people would say for this album that it's the "same old" and so on. Well, really they didn't change their sound much, nor did they change their style. They're not completely innovative, nor are they way-over-head-mind-blowing. They're simply a good solid band that does what they're best at and sticks to it "until the end".

As I was saying previously, the band didn't want to change their sound much, yet you still have a pretty good sound and atmospheric variations in each song from 1 to 12 (yes, not counting the "King Me" song since it's a total disappointment and the "Barbarosa" song), and the vocals are pretty much well worked over. What comes to everyone's surprise, and of course mine, is Randy's "clear" singing in the song "Insurrection". I don't know what the band and Randy thought they would achieve with this minor change in vocal style, but it's not completely and utterly bad, but still needs improvement though.

When it comes to sticking to what you're best at, Lamb of God really knows their stuff. The riffs are solid, classic "Morton & Willie" pinching, hammer-ons, and other stuff, varying from sludgey and slow to fast and somewhat insane. A good example of their classic work is the "To The End" song. Some would say Pantera-stolen, or some other stuff pretty much related to the "stealing Pantera's legacy" stuff, but I think it's bullshit. The song is well worked over in both rhythm and riffage, it's solid, stands it's ground, the atmosphere is good, the drumming is awesome, and vocals are pretty much standard, and even though it does remind of Pantera, and I say this for about thousandth time, it's not Pantera, nor will it ever be. That would be the same as saying that Metallica = Diamond Head, and that's also bullshit.

As far as drumming parts goes, we can clearly see that Chris improved his drumming abilities way more since the "Wrath" album. He works well with riffage and plays his own important part in the whole song creation process, so no complaints there. Bass lines are also pretty much solid, and Campbell seems like he has no real interest in improving his bass abilities to a complex level, but really, he doesn't have to. He's a solid bassist and keeps the bass gap filled.

Lyrics are pretty much standard anti-everything messages. The vocals though are a bit more better than on "Wrath" with minor...well, minor "errors in experimenting", but it can happen to anyone, because, let me remind you, they are still and only human and they're not supposed to be "perfect".

All in all, the album is pretty good, better than "Wrath" because it goes back to the "pre-Sacrament"-era a bit more, and I give it a solid 75%. Why 75%? Well for starters this album would get more praise if it weren't for 2 minor and 2 major things that bother me. Firstly, two minor things that bother me are: "Ghostwalking's" similarity to "Redneck" (from the "Sacrament" album), and some a bit unnecessary experimenting. Secondly, we have 2 major "mistakes" the band has made: the "Barbarosa" instrumental and "King Me", the closure song for the album. I don't know what the band was thinking when they recorded these two and what their purposes were, but the album could have gotten easily through with only 12 songs, or 13 if you count the newly-issued "Digital Sands" song.

So to close the review up, I recommend this album to all who like a good headbang, somewhat moshy songs, and all in all, good newly-bred music with a hook on late the '90's sound.

Your enjoyment of this record will be inversely proportional to your expectations of LoG doing something new and different.

LoG are in the awkward "fame" position where they are not held to greatness enough to get away with rehashing old formulas (like Slayer), but at the same time they don't have the reputation for odd innovations and unexpected twists to justify any 180s (like Mastodon). When you get to the top by creating a unique and brandable sound, you become hostage of the situation you've created and LoG are illustrating that perfectly for the third album in a row since they unleashed the close to perfection Ashes of the Wake.

Of course it's not like LoG aren't trying to introduce something alternative here and there. You have the sludgeriffic opening track, various acoustic guitar interludes, a couple of prominent bass lines from John Campbell and a completely out-of-the-blue closing track which I can only describe as symphonic metalcore. But it's the 11 tracks in between these left-fielders (I excluded the instrumental track Barbarosa) that are the backbone of this release and cause so much debate about LoG role on the metal scene.

And the other thing is the duration. You make your record close to an hour long only in two cases: either you feel that you have something very important and different to say and you simply must leave all of it in, or you are doing fan service and simply churn out 'more riffs for the same price'. Since there are no new themes or sounds for the majority of Resolution, I believe it is the latter and with that you get the idea, where LoG's priorities are.

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At the end of the day you get same old: Chris Adler is magnificent behind drums, Mark Morton and Willie Adler are a dizzying guitar duet and Randy Blythe will rip out your eardrums. The only problem is - there are only so many times you can get your eardrums ripped before you lose sensitivity to it.

Originally posted on my reviews blog as heavymetalspotlight.blogspot.com/

I must admit, I don't listen to as much Lamb of God as I used to, but a new album by a band so well known is enough to draw upon the curiosity of all but those most committed to excommunicating metal's mainstream side, and in all honesty, I am not one of those people. If you count Burn the Priest, "Desolation" is the band's seventh studio album, and as many prophesied, is pretty much consistent, as the band have been for a couple of albums now.

As I see it, Lamb of God released "New American Gospel", which sounded like groove-metal in a washing machine, went down an interesting road on "As the Palaces Burn", then wrote "Ashes to the Wake" and have been doing albums roughly like that ever since. This album is no exception, and aside from the occasional vocal diversification, which began to rear it's head in "Wrath", the album is definitely similar enough to be placed in the "more of the same" category. Not, might I add, that this is necessarily a bad thing; You can criticise the sameness of their material if you like, but it's also true that they're good at doing what they do. Listening to the album, it seems that the songs are all quite solidly written and don't contain too much throw-away material, something which the band have always managed to an extent. As always, or, perhaps, even more than usual, the band have some monster choruses, which are memorable to the utmost degree, and is definitely something refreshing to listen to on my "Right, I'm going to listen to something today that's quite accessible" days.

Overall, the album seems faster than the band's quintessential material, with a stronger thrash influence than that which was minimally present in Wrath, albeit in this album a lot better done. In contrast with the earlier material, there seem to be relatively fewer moments which "jump out". I'd say that the songs are just as good in many respects, but seldom did an intro occur to which ensnared me to listen to the song above the others. Making up for this, in a way, the middle of the songs seem to have a lot more going on, and when the mundanity of the intros has passed, most of the songs are very solid. One of the fascinating things on the record is the presence of the occasional experiment, straight out of the left-field; Tracks like "King Me" with it's symphonic keyboards really takes the bands sound in an interesting, albeit slightly haphazard sonic direction, and the clean vocals on "Insurrection" really do sound cool and interesting, even when in your heart, you know that it sounds rather sellout-esque.

All in all, for all the shtick that Lamb of God get, the new album definitely isn't too bad. All things considered, I'm quite impressed. It's not going to by my album of the year, and I doubt I'll feel the need to listen to it constantly, but frankly, it was a good listen, and to an extent, it's re-kindled my interest in the band a bit.

It's finally here, Lamb of God's "Resolution". We had our doubts, our beliefs and now all of our questions will be answered with this album! I must say this is definitely Lamb of God's best thus far, from beginning to end this album starts with a powerful track ("Straight for the Sun") and then ends with a powerful, yet melodic, finale ("King Me"). I listened to the entire thing at least 3 times since its release and I must admit there's nothing wrong with this album.

For starters, Lamb of God has stuck with their early-era roots, but somehow managed to change or re-create them in a different way. Everything sounds new and modern, but in a way the "old school" vibe of the band lingers and manages to stay there, they just made it sound more clean. Compared to LoG's other releases it's pretty solid and in place. Pick an album like Sacrament or Ashes of the Wake and compare it with Resolution. There's a giant difference in terms of quality and sound, LoG's earlier albums were a but too distorted and messy around the edges that you couldn't distinguish what was being played. Resolution on the other hand was definitely a resolution for the band and they tried to avoid their previous fuck-ups and turn it around with some clean and audible tracks. The guitar solos dominate the tracks, Morton executes these beautiful sweeps and melodies that are just mind blowing, and example of this will be found on almost any song on this album, but you'll hear it most on "Ghost Walking". Chris Adler's drum work has always been the best and it still is on this instalment. Blythe's vocals are actually good this time and he can extend them for gratuitous amounts of time. This album is clearly nothing like Wrath and that's a good thing, Wrath wasn't bad but we just don't want a repeat (in other words: we don't need a Wrath II).

This album blew my mind away and it's definitely LoG's best album they've made thus far, they've come a long way from Burn the Priest to Lamb of God in full form. I absolutely recommend this album to any fan, new or old, and if you've haven't heard of Lamb of God, this album is a good way to start.