Fall of Carthage
The Longed-For Reckoning

The fall and battle of Carthage happened long ago and the name of this band is probably inspired by that event. So like the archaeologists analysing that event I analyse the band Fall of Carthage by polishing the artefacts looking at scripts and ruins to get to the core of what I am hearing. With fine brushes I polish away dust, dirt and hippeti hop stuff along with the gangsta rap stuff, I find that this album don’t really offer much of a revelation or a reckoning with the conventions of the thrash metal genre it comes from. It has been a long time coming this review, or longed-for reckoning of this album and that is because it is an album that fails to do much of an impression on me. I find that it isn’t as interesting as the label and some reviewers make it out to be.

Musically it is modern thrash metal, “new school thrash & metal,” says the label and perhaps we could say that. It also has influences of rap, hip hop and some gangsta rap, like a thrash metal version of Linkin Park or something akin to that. It is well produced but long with sixteen tracks reaching almost one hour of playing time. The label writes that it offers unexpected thing and so on and so forth but when listening to it I never really stop in my stride to think, “hey, this was unexpected and wonderfully fresh.” I just feel that it is what I expect, a fairly typical modern thrash metal album with a fat ass production as the label suggests.

I would describe it as a good album but one that doesn’t quite reach all the way because when you polish away the excesses all that remain is the same as always. The album becomes something like a catch 22, the hip hop stuff may be something separating this album from their peers but they make the album seem fragmented, but skipping them would make the album like any other modern thrash album. In a way it seems like they wanted to make something different for the sake of making it different but were using too familiar elements to makes very slight variation of a theme. To me this is an album that never really catches my attention, it is too long and it does not have enough punch to make me want to listen.

I have polished away the dirt and stuff, analysed and re-analysed the material just to find that Fall of Carthage’s second album is the same thing as I thought it was the first time I heard it – it offers no surprises. I think Fall of Carthage has put together a solid effort but I think they could have done a lot better as when the dirt is all brushed away in the best archaeological way I find that this album is another solid modern thrash metal album with good production and not very much of interest in the grand scheme of things.

HHHHHHH