Lehmann
Lehmanized

Jens Lehmann the former german national team goalkeeper is releasing his debut album, or is he? You might think so considering that the cover art is a spitting image of the german. But it isn’t like that, Lehmanized is the debut album of an italian heavy metal project centred around singer Mat Lehmann who is said to be known for playing bass for Blaze Bayley and italian thrash metal band Neurasthenia. Heavy metal meets thrash, groove and prog says the press info. Well, dropping genres and names can anyone do, Blaze Bayley and Claudio Tirincanti is also namedropped by the label as well as names the band has shared the stage with and so on. Words are cheap today and it is easy to promise something, but it is another thing to show for that promise.

Lehmann show a musical front that is diverse, varied and builds on many fronts. It is difficult to really see which direction the band is taking their music as there is no unifying red line going through the entire album and you could liken it with fighting a war on three or more fronts. It feels a tad fragmented. But of course the diversity leads you to not get bored through the rather short playing time of just under 40 minutes on eight tracks. The sound is modern, nothing groundbreaking in that regard. A decently produced album that is self produced by Lehmann in his own studio.

Not a bad album. There are positives like the title track which stands out a bit as does the ending cover song where we hear Blaze Bayley do some vocal works in a very good manner. But the album is not all positives, the opening duo of tracks is a snooze fest of rarely seen proportions and when the album finally awakens it cannot quite manage to make up for the negatives incurred by the boring opening tracks. It is a difficult album to really get a grip on, it has no real standout material and I find myself struggling for good things to say about this album and this despite the fact that I hate saying negative things about bands that I know have been working hard to do the best they can possibly do with their albums.

All in all I would describe this as an album that is way too incoherent, which becomes too fragmented as it starts poorly to end on a positive with a great cover song. In the end though I have a hard time picking out a reason to listen to the album, it just isn’t good enough as it can be described as average at best. I am not Lehmanized and it is difficult to see that this is an album that will appeal to a too wide an audience.

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