Assignment
Closing the Circle

Closing the circle with their fourth assignment, that can be said about German band Assignment who are back with their fourth album. An album that see some changes to the band, they now have a singer in Diego Valdez – last time they had several vocalists this time they have less than that. They also have a new Heiko as bassist, Heiko Spaarmann who is also known for being a bass player of Poverty’s No Crime. A man I have also interviewed in relation to the latest work by Poverty’s No Crime, just as a side note. For this new album they also have a new label, Massacre Records, who state that the press feedback was excellent for their previous album that was released in 2013. Hallowed wasn’t too impressed but we may not belong to the relevant media, or something like that but we will write about their new album anyway.

They claim in the press release that this is a progressive album, and that it is a multifaceted metal genre mix with focus on the song itself. I don’t really see that myself as I think it sounds mostly like a heavy/power metal album does in general, perhaps with some touches of progressiveness but if that was the case of some genre mixing we would have to call everything progressive and this is just about typical heavy metal. It is quite powerful, the production is excellent and the new vocalist is quite good and certainly makes a great job on this album. One could argue that a 61-minute playing time needs more variation than what this album has to offer. And another argument can be that the album is rather predictable, heavy metal fans might disagree with me though as they usually like their music as predictable as possible.

Assignment’s fourth album is very good, they will most certainly appeal to fans of heavy metal with their rather classical heavy metal. They offer catchy choruses and classic heavy metal riffs, plenty of power and lots of energy – it is a rather entertaining album despite it being predictable. I doubt this will be a significantly remembered album when this year is to be summarised, it is probably not one of the albums that will feature on the top ten lists. Nevertheless, to the targeted audience I believe this is an album that will be much appreciated and probably also well received by all those reviewers who like everything they hear and completely lack critical thinking. I think that with some more variation through the album and a bit more depth it would have been a fairly great album.

The title track is the only one I find vaguely memorable while the rest of the album is rather good but also rather forgetful.  In the end I would say that this is about the same as their previous album, no better and no worse than that. It works and you cannot dislike it but I find it equally difficult to be impressed by it, fans of heavy metal should check out this album.

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