Poltergeist
Feather of Truth

“Swiss speed/thrash legends Poltergeist are back with a new album!” This opening statement in the press sheet had me thinking; what constitutes a legend? What makes a band legendary? So, in search of confirming the band’s legend status I went on that awful google thing and searched for poltergeist, I looked at the five first pages, like a hundred results and none of them referred to this band, mostly to the movie with the same name that might have inspired the band name. I added band to the search quote and now I found some info about them, wikipedia was probably the best even though it didn’t look like the pages for legends like Metallica to name a real legend in the genre. I learnt that the band started out as Carrion and later changed the name to Poltergeist, they had a hiatus between 1993 and 2016 and have a few albums in the discography. I didn’t see the legend status mentioned, so that statement seems a bit dubious – perhaps it is in the eye of the beholder.

Thrash metal is the description for Feather of Truth with a style similar to bands of old but not has heavy as the more powerful genre legends. The vocalist is average at best with a gruff voice that isn’t very emotive. Average production, perhaps somewhat flat and no different from many of their peers. I find that the tracks show relative variation, but as the album is 57 minutes in CD-version the second half still tends to blur together into an unwieldy mass of similitude. A shorter album would have been preferable but before you tell me to go for the vinyl instead, I have to say that it is too long as well, at least two tracks too long. In that regard it isn’t really a well-rounded album, thrash metal is also one of those genres that really needs to be impactful and hence a long album is very detrimental to that impression.

I guess the album is pretty okay, works pretty well as background music. When listening to it is the main task I tend to notice that it lacks the aggression, the power, the emotional response, the speed, the energy, the finesse, the life, and some other things, that you hear from the best names in the genre. Bland is the way I would describe it. It is also that when listening to this album for this review or just listening in general I am so uninterested that the mind starts to wander and this intensifies the more the album goes on and when I have played through it often takes a while before I notice that it has ended as my mind is so absent that the music has vanished and it is only when some disturbing noise reminds me that I notice. I think that the songs themselves are all okay, some are pretty good but as an album it leaves much to be desired. I even stopped listening to this album and took on some others I am to review later halfway through the text of the Swedish review as it was impossible to stay awake enough to focus on the writing when playing this album.

For a distraction at that time I did look around the web at the other reviews where I found that the other site that uses to be critical thought more or less the same as I do. The others were very positive, two gave them ten out of ten, which is just insane as that would indicate that this is one of the best albums ever released in music history – no one in the world can think this album is that good. It is a generic thrash metal album of the kind that shows up in droves every year, okay songs and way too long – barely acceptable is how I would rate it.

HHHHHHH