Holy Target

I purchased this album at my local music shop for one basic reason above all else. It was cheap. Just under five bucks for it. Definitely worth it, but I still wish it had a better payoff then this. A few songs on this album are good, some are downright great, but there's not really anything special. The band's performances are frankly excellent, especially the drumming. The songwriting is above average as well, but the album just suffers greatly from a lack of originality and a mediocre vocalist.

And I mean lack of originality. The formulas here are taken directly from Dissection's book and plugged and chugged for different results. Did you like that math metaphor? Before I got this album, I only new a little bit of Dissection and was familiar with only a few of their songs. Even with my limited knowledge of Dissection I could hear the worship, right down to the obviously forced devil worship lyrics. Seriously, the band picture on the back cover is so silly and the lyrics are about as interesting as a statistics lecture (math analogy part 2). But still, this album was good enough to get me more into Dissection, leading my beloved lady friend to get Storm of the Light's Bane as a birthday present (and many more albums, look to the future for a chain of b-day album reviews). That is probably the best plus of this album because I fucking love Dissection now.

As for the other weakness of this album, I find Nilssons' vocals adequate, but not exemplary. It doesn't hold me back from enjoying the music, but his garbled barking often comes of as a little silly and sounds like it's coming from a drunk guy. I don't find too many of his vocal lines memorable or interesting. He doesn't have any impressive shrieks or deep growls or anything special. I'd definitely rank him as a below average vocalist. The two vocal lines I tend to enjoy the most are the admittedly awesome 'TO THE CROSS YOU ARE STUCK' in Holy Target and the chorus of Red Ripper. Still, his vocals hold the band back from greatness a bit.

Now for the more positive aspects of this album. Though the riffs are generated in the aforementioned Dissection equation, some are really awesome. The melodic tremolo riffs of Raise the Devil are particularly awesome, but there is a good amount of buzzing goodness on this album that will invoke smirks on any fan of the genre. The bass is virtually inaudible except for a brief break in Raise the Devil. I think that may be for the best though, and I do not have any problems with the mix on this album. If the bass was much louder, it'd distract from the riffs and the awesome drumming.

And that is certainly what the highlight is of the album. Ekdahl fucking destroys the skins on this album. He has awesome fill after awesome fill, lightning fast blasts, and very varied, but powerful rhythms. This guy really holds the album together and I'd definitely buy future albums with him on as drummer.

Really, if this band tried a bit more on having their own band and finding a vocalist, this album may have been really good, but they didn't, so it'll have to be happy as the average knock-off it is. Jonas Nilsson did manage to write a few awesome songs on here that I will probably listen to every once in a while even after getting Dissection, but the album as a whole, though bearable and not too hard to listen to beginning to end, is just a bit over ok.

So for great drumming and some memorable riffs interspersed with silly imagery and band worship, Raise Hell's Holy Target gets a 65 out of 100 or a 3 out of 5.
Highlights:
Raise the Devil
Holy Target
The Red Ripper