Unter schwarzen Sonnen

I don't know if this band started making more money or what, but with every release the production value goes up. Their third album Unter Schwarzen Sonnen impressed me more than any before it.

Musically not much has changed, but it's more melodic than before. You've got an emphasis on the bouncy, cheerful Oi style of riff that the band always uses. The guitar solos (which come on almost every song) sound especially "happy." There's also plenty of melodic songs though with fast-tempo tremolo playing, which would eventually develop into the soothing ballads on Ahnenfeuer. When the bass guitar shows up it adds a wonderful bluesy groove, but it's rare.

Drumwork is pretty simplistic. Just keeping a beat, but there's nice cymbal flairs during the solos and stuff. But suddenly during the last three songs, all of which kind of blend together as faster-paced RAC songs, the drumming kicks up a notch or three and he gives a much better performance with blast beats, bass pedals and a ton of speed.

There is some variety in the vocals but it's weird because it's isolated to certain songs. Most of the time he sticks to a deeper growl; and adds redubbing on some choruses to create a sing-along "anthem" sound on songs like "Heil dem Blut" and "Foltermeister." Then out of nowhere there are two songs which are opposites of each other: "Der Tod" where he growls much deeper than anywhere else on the album, for the entire song, and "Black Empire" where he shrieks much higher than anywhere else on the album, imitating the Norwegian sound... for the entire song. It's like they were both experiments. It's really disorienting to the listener. Experimenting with vocal range is a good thing but doing it in this way is pretty strange.

Overall it's worth a listen. I like the clean production, I like the melody and solos on the first half of the album and I enjoyed the speed on the end of the album. Jarring change of vocal style and some samey songs keep this album from being perfect, but it's really good and worth returning to.