Don’t you hate it when a band is so consistent, the members are so good as musicians and the albums are so great that we rarely have anything bad to talk trash about? No? Well, I do, because it’s just no fun to the competition and the fans in general, and I feed on the awfulness and boredom of bad albums because they make me a better – and more hated, yay – reviewer. God Dethroned, that putrid and annoyingly awesome quintet from the Netherlands, disbanded after ‘Under the Sign of the Cross’, in 2012, and arranged a reunion in 2014 to play a select amount of gigs across the corruption-raped lands of the Earth – and the vast sea, as well, as they performed in the 70k tons of Metal Cruise in 2015, which was, guess what? Yeah, awesome; no fun -, but showed no promise of releasing a new album until late 2016. So I thought “OK, now I’ll get to trash them. No way a band can return to top form after completely ending its activities and losing some of the joy to play music, right?
You see, I was very excited to review ‘The World Ablaze’, tenth full-length effort by the ever-competent Henri Sattler (guitars, vocals) and his helpers Michiel van der Plicht (drums, Apophis), J
‘The World Ablaze’ pretty much takes what its predecessor did and executes it with competence. The more melodic-crafted lines and the exotic atmosphere are present in tunes like “On the Wrong Side of the Wire” and “The 11th Hour” while the brutality and pompousness can be seen on the more venomous tracks like “Close to Victory”, “Messina Rage” and “Breathing Through Blood”; this last one being more cadenced and heavy, almost doom-like, with a marvelous scaling riff. Sattler’s growls sound as good as ever and the tuning of the guitars reminisces the ‘Ravenous’-era, providing a good amount of distortion and pedal-work. The kitchen beautifully supports the rifferama, with van der Plicht stealing the show by pounding the skins and plates like there’s no tomorrow. Sorrowful and dense bits are present as well. “Königsberg” and “Escape Across the Ice (the White Army)” take care of those emotions by telling the sad and ominous story of the White Army, a confederation of Anti-Communist forces that fought the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War; cool stuff. The lyrics, by the way, are not mind-blowing, Shakespearian pieces of art, but do fill their purpose well. The mixing is another positive point here. The legendary Dan Swanö did a wonderful job with it and made the album even better with his unique view.
Like Swanö wisely said, “This album is a great combination of all kinds of tempos and styles the genre has to offer, each performed with crushing perfection, and catchy choruses and memorable melodic hooks! It will go down well among fans of Bolt Thrower”. So there you have it. This is a stellar comeback of a band that should have never ended its activities. It made me angry as hell for not having weak spots because I was ready and willing to be one of the first human beings ever to put God Dethroned’s