Headless Crown
Century of Decay

Second effort from Swiss heavy metallers Headless Crown, an album that kind of brings the mind back to the first album Time for Revolution that was released in 2015. This album has a similar title in Time for Decay, similar artwork by the same artist and they have the same band and the same producer as before. Not much has changed. The lyrical themes of this album are along the lines of movies like 12 Monkeys, Brazil, Blade Runner and that style of films and stories – kind of dark and dystopian.

In terms of the musical Style I think this album follows in the path of the first with quite classically styled heavy metal, relatively catchy songs and a vocalist that feels kind of typical for the genre. The production is on par with the debut, not much difference there and the fact is that there is not much difference at all between this new album and its predecessor. Perhaps there is slightly more variation and a little more interesting perspectives to the songs than what we got last time, and also a bit more depth – but the difference is small. This, like the predecessor, is also a too long album with a playing time of 55 minutes; they could easily do away with at least ten minutes without losing anything. It seems as though Headless Crown remains on the same spot, they don’t seem to evolve.

Got to say that the songs are fairly good overall, no overly weak tracks are there but no brilliant standout tracks either. It is an okay album that might be liked by the fans of the general heavy metal music, and certainly liked by those who enjoyed the first album by these guys. The big risk is however, that this album will be drowned and forgotten even before it really gets the chance to be noticed – this genre ha so much music coming all the time and you need something special if you want to be noticed and that something is something that these guys are lacking.

Had there been a strong hit song or something that stood out on this album I could have been more positive towards it, but there is nothing original or really exciting about this album. It is a decent heavy metal album with decent songs, kind of feels bound to drown in that ever-growing mainstream of decent heavy metal albums. Kind of like an album where you feel it should have been better considering the musical know-how and technology that exists today. But in the end I feel that Headless Crown’s second album is kind of the same as the first one; a too long and too unoriginal piece of heavy metal – it is okay but nothing that stands out.

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