Originally written by Ian Chainey
Some bands release records with a frequency rivaling sex-addicted polygamists sending save-the-date cards. For those busy bees, albums are easy. No sweat. Plus, they’re always finding ways to make more. Once Aidan Baker uncovers how to drone in his dreams, he’ll surely soundtrack our every second. Heck, Circle‘s brilliant jerks have already discovered they don’t even need to be in the band. Membership? Pffft, doesn’t matter, the new streams still flow like water. Because, hey, what’s another 40 albums between bands, superfans, and their bank accounts? Music can be simple.
Other groups, though, seem to go super nova whenever studio time is scheduled. And, it’s not a creative BOOM. Nah: Seams burst, mates go flying. The record grooves become garrotes and only the strongest/most dick-headed are left without wrecked necks. So, for this subset, every LP ends up as a fight, another test of glass jaws vs. bear paws. Need an example? An epitome? Scope the title: Artillery.
To say Denmark’s leader of its thrash class had it tough is like saying the citizens of Pompeii picked a bad day to sleep in. When your most commonly recited-at-BBQs anecdote concerns your old drummer brushing off Bathory since Artillery was, from his perspective, poised to be bigger, that’s rough. Rougher: The consistent lineup inconsistencies, the constant break-ups, the label-decided delays, and the general sense of impending doom making one wonder if the ax-wiz Stützer bros ran over the daughter of a gypsy sometime in the early ’80s. That’s gotta be it, right? Why else would the ride have been so bumpy? And, we’re talking really bumpy, like rolling a jalopy constructed from superballs into the Grand Canyon.
Yet, through it all, they’ve managed some classics. Their ’85 LP debut, Fear of Tomorrow, was a raw thrash ripper, as an assured opening shot as you’ll find. (Largely because it was preceded by a billion demos, but who’s counting?) And, 1990’s glimmering charm, By Inheritance, was a masterpiece of melodic metal integration into more aggressive forms. It rivals Metal Church‘s absolute pinnacle since the hooks were like glitter, always there after your first encounter. It still inspires. Or, sigh, it would if Lady Luck had call waiting. Eff it, let’s go on feather-ruffling record: If this was the path thrash took instead of “Sad But True” grooves and nu-metal moves, the style might’ve endured the decade as more than a kitschy time capsule stuffed with threadbare swag for millennials to soon don like a punchline. Except it didn’t, because of course it didn’t. Why would the cards ever come up in Artillery‘s favor?
Legions, the band’s seventh full-length overall and third following a productive ’09 reformation, is another unfortunate hand. It’s a stay at 16 when the dealer has been hitting 21 all night. It’s safe. Frustratingly so. Like a lot of vets this deep into their service, the gents forgo grit and sharp edges for smooth lines. (Reason: When you get to a certain age, the thought of wasting finite time on a failure is TERRIFYING.) Granted, this mitigates a true trend-hopping fiasco – its only real aspect of untrve modernity is the beefy production; no dub-wobbles, no calculator-required widdle riddles – but it’s too clean for its own good, too worried about satisfying a Euro metal market that’s uninterested in what this outfit’s Coroner-sized artistic potential used to be. Sure, the Stützers do their damnedest to quick-pick in excitement: there are entwined lines and loco solos getting tabbed out right now by eager six-string sleuthers. But, the highs are suppressed by rote structures meant to match the thrilling unpredictability of tumbling dice. Problem? Those tombstones are weighted, my friend. You always know what will be facing heavenwards.
For a comebacker such as Accept or another outfit that didn’t cut its teeth with steely intricacies, this would be fine. (And it was, will still be.) For thrash? For the genre built on the more-everything, this-could-be-anything ingenuity of bored, invincible teenagers? It’s not a good look. Thrash, at the very least, requires a threat of some sort to gain traction. Legions is about as threatening as a featherweight underwear model getting pushy. Worse, it’s all surface pleasures, a Blow Pop unknowingly packed with pablum. (Just like a certain critic’s prose, hey-ooo! Self-slam!) It’s faceless. It’s a listless Anthrax wearing a Michael Myers mask. Every song, no matter what iTunes’s Plays column displays, sounds like you’re hearing it for the first time. That’s not a compliment.
Here, click it:
Click it again. Again. It’s like a battery, and not the awesome kind. It loses fuel with every flicked switch. First impressions are fine – the pace doesn’t yet feel like a treadmill, guitar-smelling smoke suggests a fire burning somewhere – but then it takes on the odor of old ham by the time the boomerang smacks your hand. You’ve heard it by virtue of having heard thrash.
Be that as it may, after many spins, some choruses do stick. C’mon, Artillery‘s employees aren’t idiots. They can pen a song. They’ve put in their 10,000 hours. That said, Legions is the kind of 55-minute slog where you suck up your favorite cut (it’s the thankfully-up-front “Chill My Bones (Burn My Flesh),” don’t argue), plop it on a mix, and stick the resulting MP3 speed-dating-party in your car. (Then, you try not to wince when you see Legions later in the dollar bin.) It’s just so inoffensive. It’s so okay. (Again, it’s not bad, it’s just not good.) No passenger or passerby will ever ask you to ID the artist. That’s not exactly the mark of inspiring material unless you were weirdly galvanized by, like, Antoine Walker’s late-career ab flab.
Of course, Michael Bastholm Dahl, the new throat on loan from Ripe, isn’t the dude to harden Artillery‘s fluffy, feather-down guts. His voice, which at times sounds like Sebastian Bach meekly bending to the will of a dodgy hands-free device, transitions Legions into the realm of power thrash, just not much power and not much thrash.
Wait, hold up, safe power thrash?
With that, all American readers have clicked close. Such are our diverging appetites. The monoculture is wheezing. There’s now nothing worse than the middle of the road, especially if the act in question isn’t already established. So, that’s the rub: Artillery isn’t established on our shores anymore and never will be with this sort of effort. Works for Wacken, not here. Tough love. The only way Artillery can fix that fact is by releasing more albums, BRAVER albums, BOLDER albums. We’ve all seen how that goes, though. Luck sucks.
Final verdict: Best to grab the first three plus the demo collection and call it a day. That’s a shame, but it’s nothing to sniff at. After all, some bands never get a shot at one album. Music can be hard.
