The Ride Majestic

Where The Living Infinite might have had a little too much ambition and material for its own good, Soilwork would return a couple years later with an album that was more reined in, but no less epic in production and scope. The Ride Majestic was impressively arranged, with a crystal clear production that never lacks for punch, and doused in some of the band's heavier material since the first few years of their existence. The tracks here have a lot of layers, balancing off the newfound extremity with the penchant for melodic hooks and choruses which they were in no danger of abandoning. This is also another 'grower' of an album, I know it didn't receive the greatest response when it arrived, but having gone back to it through the years it just feels richer and denser each time, and like Sworn to a Great Divide, it's one of the albums that notched up in my estimation as I've torn back through the whole discography.

If you missed the metal-ness and intensity that the Swedes were always capable of, but only letting trickle through the records over the decade before this one, The Ride Majestic has your back, and this is moored by what might be Dirk Verbeuren's best performance on a Soilwork record. Speed helped write the shit out of this album, but the dual guitar onslaught of Sylvain Coudret and the late David Andersson was all up in your face with great work that melds catchy, potent rhythm guitars and melodies together in new ways that don't sound like the band are merely ripping themselves off. "Death in General" and "Petrichor in Sulphir" are excellent examples of the range here, technically proficient and yet constantly accessible, each track loaded with licks, beats and strong vocals slathered all over the top, even when the instruments are striking their most prog-laden passages. When Speed hits all the cool choruses here, the music remains relatively busy below, and I think if you were to look back at the spread of all their releases, this one might stand as one of their more technically adept.

But that wouldn't mean much without the songwriting, and The Ride Majestic is moving and emotional and inventive without betraying any of the core principles of the band. It's not a stretch to say that I wished this were the album to follow up Natural Born Chaos after a few years, it might not reach that level of veneration with me, but this is far and away my favorite album they've put out since that seminal four-album stretch of excellence which christened their career. There a few softer moments which feel like proggy platitudes, but otherwise this one is consistently rewarding me when I head back to it, and the pristine recording and veritable onslaught of fresh riffing ideas underpin a fire that I had not heard within the band's ranks for nearly 15 years before it, just a great time that I'm almost always happy to listen to when I'm not jerking Natural Born Chaos or The Chainheart Machine off the rack for the memories.

-autothrall
http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

The year is 2015, and Soilwork release their tenth studio album, with the last one being a full twenty-song double disc album. It's safe to say this is the point where the band would definitely need to change up their formula and would be well advised to come up with something not just a little different, but substantially different while retaining their identity, in order to remain truly relevant. Instead, 'The Ride Majestic' is basically an extension of the last album, and if not for a slight shift in flavor, could've been CD3 of 'The Living Infinite'. That is in style, not necessarily in quality.

Aggressive verses, a pre-chorus setting up the big central chorus abounding with harmonious melody... the long time fan has heard that enough that this needed to be either blatantly original, or brilliantly written. It's neither of these things. However, it's still Soilwork, meaning this is still actually good music. For the new convert who barely knows the band for example and likes the handful of tracks he'd heard, this album would likely be totally convincing. But so many of the hooks, at least in areas, sound all too familiar to the habitual Soilworker, and at this point, this just isn't enough.

There are some particularly fresh and especially catchy parts, like the chorus on the opening track, or even more so the one on 'Enemies In Fidelity', outright one of the best choruses they ever wrote (and what an unusual outro with blast beats over the warm orchestral strings). Also, the chorus on 'The Phantom' with that mid-range, vibrato-heavy voice brings a bit of novelty to the sound. It's a shame the album couldn't expand on more of this sort of distinct-sounding material, as despite being really solid it generally sounds quite innocuous and just too overdone within the context of the Soilwork discography. A song like like 'The Ride Majestic (Aspire Angelic)' is just generic Soilwork for example. Worse yet, 'Death In General' is flat out cheesy. It sounds like if Opeth deliberately turned mainstream. Too many of the choruses, although melodic, sound aggressive and like they're forcing the attention of the listener with Strid using his yelling singing voice nearly systematically while the instrumentals have this sort of repetitive, obvious drive to them. The choruses also sound generally more plastic-y and shallow than on the previous album. They often insure that bare minimum by Soilwork standards, but no more than that.

It's consistently too bright and certainly could've used a lot more variation, and one could definitely make the argument this is the most formatted their sound had been. Ever. Some previous albums may be accused of being too mainstream sounding, sure, but not uniform in sound from beginning to end like this. The production is of course quasi-perfect, which may not serve the album entirely as the squeaky clean sound makes it feel a bit more mechanically identical and doesn't help it acquire any more natural charm. The band ultimately come across as having lacked hindsight writing this. A little bit like fish in a bowl. They likely would've considerably benefited from taking a big step outside their comfortable groove, taking a deep breath and coming up with an honest estimation of what direction to take the sound. It wouldn't have taken a monumental effort to just add a bit more of, say, an atmospheric touch to it, or just inject a bit of novelty some way. This is the safe route, and it feels exactly that: too safe.

Soilwork is one of those bands that came out of the late 90s explosion of interest in the Gothenburg variant of death metal with the all too familiar stigma of simply being along for the ride. And while the proverbial roller-coaster that is the changing landscapes of the music scene has brought some sizable changes to their sound, they've continued to be dogged by the notion of being forever in In Flames' shadow. Lately, however, this has been less of an issue as while Soilwork has stayed largely in the same place that they've been since the mid-2000s, In Flames has seen a sizable decline in ambition that has many questioning whether they are still even a metal band, let alone any variant of death metal. In fact, Soilwork has been getting better at their metalcore-oriented craft of late and have become fairly ambitious, going so far as to releasing a double CD dubbed The Living Infinite of an impressive quality, if not a bit overambitious to boot.

Nipping on the heels of this rather sizable studio accomplishment comes The Ride Majestic, which is essentially the same stylistic expression of the massive album from two years back in a smaller package. The overall tempo of things is slightly less furious than The Crown, the melodic content is a fairly complex incorporation of guitar lines that is reminiscent of Iron Maiden, but expressed in the more frenzied manner of latter day Death (think The Sound Of Perseverance), and the atmosphere is notably dense yet crisp. The most auspicious element at play, however, is the many voices of Bjorn Strid, who in the recent tradition of Jari Mäenpää, Stu Block and the multiple vocalist of Scar Symmetry, loads up the arrangement with a wide variety of clean and dirty vocalizations, essentially morphing himself into a one-man choir and adding layer upon layer of melodic interplay onto an already elaborate instrumental arrangement.

Though the songs on here come in compact packages that clock in at about average radio length, the potential for variation within these moderate sized time blocks in fairly impressive. On the more complex end of things stands the blast and shred happy "All Along Echoing Paths" and the blinding tremolo steeped fury of "The Phantom", both songs that are about up to the level of frenetic rage to match most of what was heard on Crowned In Terror. When things get a bit more streamlined and subdued in a manner more befitting this band's commonalities with In Flames, songs like "The Ride Majestic", "Enemies In Fidelity" and "Whirl Of Pain" bring forth heavy similarities to a darker shade of Iron Maiden inspired power metal, yet still ultimately come off as hard-hitting enough to pass for the heavier end of Arch Enemy. The only thing that really keeps this thing in the metalcore category is the vocal work, and compared to the likes of All That Remains and Killswitch Engage, this has far more attitude.

It's a foregone conclusion that steadfast fans of traditional melodic death metal where clean vocals are either never employed or employed in a manner almost as dirty and vile as the unclean variety will approach anything by Soilwork after A Predator's Portrait with a massive grain of salt. While there is definitely still a sizable stylistic disconnect between this album and where things were for this outfit prior to 2002, this is a good bit closer to that sound than anything they've put out prior to this. By metalcore standards, this is a rock solid album, though admittedly this listens more like a melodic death metal album with metalcore vocal parts thrown in than anything else. It doesn't quite come out looking outright majestic, but as far as rides go, one could do a lot worse.