Constantine
Aftermath

It is quite obvious from the opening track Bushido that Constantine is a guitarist and a skilled one at that. He has been heard in bands like Mystic Prophecy and Nightrage and is now active in Descending and Nightfall. With this one he has two albums under his own name, as far as I know this is the first one that reaches me. It doesn’t have the greatest of cover arts but it features some strong singers like Ralf Scheepers and Björn Strid to name a pair. It is also wisely kept short with only eight tracks where the first one is an instrumental and the playing time is just over the half hour mark.

It opens with some excellent guitar shredding and melodies, then comes Strid in a Soilworkish song, Scheeprs in a Primal Fearish song and so one. The songs feels very targeted at the singers skills rather than on telling the story about Constantine and his abilities and ideas. As there are so many different singers the album shows large variation but also a touch of incoherency as it sounds a bit like a compilation of singles by different bands or like someone’s playlist of songs, it isn’t giving the same sense of coherency as a well-crafted album does. The singers are good though and bring out the best of their songs, the production is also strong so there isn’t really much to complain about in that regard.

The songs are all good, it is the whole of the album that doesn’t quite measure up to the best as a well-crafted album has a logical flow through it, this doesn’t. That is the weakness, I would have loved more like Bushido, let the guitars dominate in the tracks with vocals as well – it is like Constantine shows some of him in the first track while the rest are good but quite generic metal songs that would be fine on albums by the singers’ respective bands. I like the songs but I would have liked to hear something that was a bit outside the box, something daring and dramatic and not just one more heavy metal collection of songs.

Aftermath is an album that should be good enough for anyone; there is even some hit potential in the opening instrumental highlight Bushido. But while the album is probably good enough for anyone, will it be great enough to be anyone’s favourite album? I doubt that it will be, I think the songs are too good to just dismiss but I would check out the album before purchasing it.

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