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I'm not sure if I'll find the right words to describe this album, so extraordinary it is. With their third album, the Finnish band Throne Of Chaos (or 'TOC' how they are called since
the release of this album) created a piece of music where it is simply impossible to describe its genre. Already their debut album, which gave them the nickname "Children of Bodom's kid brother" for some obvious reasons, was pretty successful. From then on they experimented with several styles and already their second album "Pervertigo" showed an interesting mix of different genres but still based on their original keyboard-orientated melodic death metal style. Anyway, not only their style is unique, also the cover artworks of their albums look untypical and make it impossible to 'guess' what kind of music they are actually playing.
So what is Loss Angeles about? As I said above, there is no clear genre, but you are about to find elements of power metal, rock, lots of progressive parts, still some thrash/death elements and it even seems to have a jazzy touch. Whereas the first steps - on
"Pervertigo" - to actually mix these genres, were too strong and made TOC sound a bit like they lost their orientation, on this album the different styles are very well connected so that it sounds really interesting and promising.
Starting right away with "The Window" you get the first impression how they make genres fit together. There are as well melodic, progressive and even jazz parts in this song. The instrumental song "The Blue Lady Suite" and "Gothamburg" are even more progressive and especially the second one slightly reminds me of some Pain of Salvation-songs just regarding the vocals. There is also one song I could call 'back to the roots' since "Break-A-Neck" sounds different to all other songs, contains death metal vocals and thrashy guitar riffs. Among those rather fast songs, "Mary Lou Is Dead" is a well-done ballad like you can find it on power metal albums. Last but not least you can find a short, thrashy and aggressive cover-version of Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water". Stand-out tracks: "Acid Highway", "The Window", "Wait". To regard the album as a whole, which contains a melancholic story about love and crime by the way, it is an impressive piece of art you won't find that very often nowadays. Even though this song called "Break-A-Neck" doesn't really fit into the whole, it is always good to create something unique and albums like this rather draws my attention on it than albums fitting into clear categories.
| Tracklist |
| 1. The Window |
| 2. Mary Lou Is Dead |
| 3. Acid Highway |
| 4. Gothamburg |
| 5. Blue Lady |
| 6. Wait |
| 7. The Blue Lady Suite |
| 8. Break-A-Neck |
| 9. Bite The Bullet |
| 10. Smoke On The Water |
| (Deep Purple cover) |
: 44.27
| Buy other TOC albums |
