Chastain
We Bleed Metal

Chastain, Leather and co are bleeding metal while making their tenth studio album, the second since the return in 2013. Chastain is a well-known name in metal circuits and his band’s most known work is from the time when Leather was doing the vocals. So what about this album? Well, the cover looks dull both the one that accompanied my press material and the one I have seen on some other websites. And what can I say about the title other than that it is ridiculous? I don’t know, nothing. But silliness aside, I am always trying to be as objective as I can and I know that most heavy metal bands has a silly way of seeing the world, or at least musically relating to it so it is not a big deal.

The Leather lungs female that sings the lyrics is a real strong point of this album, innovative thinking and creative song writing isn’t. Chastain is shredding hard and heavy on his guitar and the production sounds powerful and well made, I would describe it as a solid performance. Decent variation over the nine tracks that takes you three quarters of an hour to get through, there are no surprises though and you sort of get what you can expect from an album within this genre. Some people will see it as lacking from a creative standpoint, and see it as there is a problem that this album might drown within a genre that is very overcrowded already, but of course having made a name in the past helps getting noticed.

Overall it is a decent album, there was some reviewer that claimed it was a masterpiece and gave it ten out of ten, which seems way over the top – it is far from that good and it is far from as unique as required for such a statement. I think that this is a solid heavy metal album, the songs are pretty good and the vocals are the greatest thing about the album, but it offers nothing more than what you can expect, it is a fairly typical heavy metal album in most regards. I doubt that this album would have made any ripples on the heavy metal waters had the name been something unknown on the cover, fans of typical heavy metal who wants it like they dreamed it was in the eighties might find it pretty entertaining – as a reviewer it is hard to say that it is anything other than an average heavy metal album.

This album is in between, it is not fantastic and it is not bad, it sits in the middle of our scale not really standing out one way or another. It doesn’t offer anything more interesting than what many other similar bands have already offered this year, and to receive a higher rating you need to offer something more exciting than your decent everyday heavy metal band. This is pretty good, the songs work and no song is really poor, the sound is excellent but the album doesn’t feel fresh or exciting it is a typical album for the middle of our scale – a middle of the road album.

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