|
|
|
|
Having had no previous experience with Mercenary, I had no idea what to expect going in. The cover doesn't really betray the album's contents and, unless you are a black or death metal band, group photos say nothing about the music these days.
After a brief buildup, "Redefine Me" begins the album proper, and for the next 6 minutes, you are overwhelmed by soaring vocals and intricate riffing. If I could award an album of the year honor based on just one song, this would surely take it. I remember thinking, about midway through the song, that the album couldn't possibly deliver on this level for its duration,and for the most part, I feel that I was correct in that assumption. This is not to say that the rest of the album is bad in any way, it just doesn't maintain the momentum that it builds at the onset.
"Year Of The Plague" comes next, and offers something a bit more typical. The vocals alternate between a kind of growl/scream and the exellent clean style. This dichotomy would come to be a point of contention for me by the end of the song. I have no aversion to screaming or shrieking or growling or whatever else extreme metal throws at me these days, and for many bands that I enjoy, it would work no other way. With Mercenary however, the screaming does nothing but make me wish the exellent clean vocals had been used exclusively.
It is around "Simplicity Demand" that the album begins to lose itself a bit. As the album draws closer to its conclusion, the song structures seem to become more complacent, with the screaming vocals coming to more prominence and the entire affair becoming more typical of the melodeath genre. It's still very good melodeath, but it leaves me with the feeling that I listened to this album once already when Dark Tranquility released it as "Character". The progressive direction that the band seemed to lean toward is shoved more into the background, with no one song capturing the sheer enjoyability as the ones that came before.
I imagine that given the score I awarded the album, my review comes off sounding a bit negative. In truth, "The Hours That Remain" is an exellent album from an extremely talented band. The second half finds them doing nothing new, but what they do they do with class and confidence. This is soaring and catchy progressive melodeath and should be checked out by fans of the genre.
| Tracklist |
| 1. Redefine Me |
| 2. Year Of The Plague |
| 3. My World Is Ending |
| 4. This Eternal Instant |
| 5. Lost Reality |
| 6. Soul Decision |
| 7. Simplicity Demand |
| 8. Obscure Indiscretion |
| 9. My Secret Window |
| 10. The Hours That Remain |
: 62.13
| Buy other Mercenary albums |
