Arch Enemy – Blood Dynasty

vote
7.0

• Band:
  Arch enemy
• Duration: 00:42:45
• Available from: 28/03/2025
• Label:

• Century Media Records

Streaming not yet available

In the last decade, the Arch Enemy have seen increasingly growing their popularity in metal mainstream, thanks to a now consolidated and immediately recognizable sound trademark – a sweetened version of the Melodic Death Metal that was, with a hyperpated production and tons of melody in the innumerable guitar labor of the Mastermind Michael Amott – combined with a stage Characteristic (albeit a little sliced ​​in the live site) thanks to the innesto of Alissa White-Gluz behind the microphone, substitute for the most rough Angela Gossow.
After sublimating the formula with “Will To Power”, some slight hint of change had appeared on the previous “Deceivers” and, according to the former Carcass, should have found further outburst in this “Blood Dynasty”, twelfth album and fourth with Alissa.
The “Dream Sterer” Open is the 'usual' single of the new Arch Enemy Post- “War Eternal” (fast rhythmics, aggressive but not too much rhythms, melodic hooks in profusion and an epic taste in the refrain), but already from the next “Illuminate The Path” you can hear something new, with the clean timbre of Alissa to guide the refrain Canonian: not a novelty in an absolute sense (the clean voices had already appeared sporadically in the past) but a welcome variation on the theme.
An authentic surprise is instead “Vivre Libre”, a reinterpretation of an old Blaspheme song (cult group of the Heavy Metal Transalpine scene of the eighties): an avocative Ballad dark made in a similar way to the original (sung in French included), successful too well to be relegated to the role of bonus track for which it was initially expected, at the point of becoming the first cover included in the tracklist. Adjust an Arch Enemy album.
The attempt to vary with respect to the usual Canovaccio all 'Speed ​​and melody' also shines through the attack of “March of the Underworld”, in which the most square rhythms and the drummer's mechanics Fill Daniel Erlandsson remember in some ways the cybernetic concept of “Doomsday Machine” (album that celebrates the twentieth anniversary); In the same way, the arrangements in the ups and downs of the refrain of “The Pendulum”-complete with keyboards in the foreground played by Erlandsson himself, co-author of all the instrumental parts together with Amott-are closer to the Stratovarius of “Black Diamond” than at the Gothenburg sound.
The rest of the album travels vice versa on the more traditional coordinate: the Ottantian solos of the Swedish Guitar Hero-Orphan of Jeff Loomis and now flanked by Joey Concepcion on the rhythmic guitar-in the almost prog “a Million Suns” and the attack on the fulmicotone of “Don't look down” represent the most interesting parts, while the canonical Midtempo della Title-Track, the most. Rockent “Paper Tiger” or the very tight “Liars & Thieves” add nothing to what has already been heard in the rest of the previous discography, while confirming a winning formula, already widely appreciated by the public in the past.
For a band close to turning off the thirty candles, “Blood Dynasty” represents a solid confirmation, with the usual dose of profession and some slight digression.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbmx5au1da