The Waymaker
s/t

Christian Liljegren and Jani Stefanovic, the guys behind The Waymaker, has over 50 albums experience and now they claim to have done an “all killer, no filler” and Scandinavian metal with a new twist according to the press material. It would be a first for Liljegren considering that all the albums I have heard with him on vocals sound very similar and rarely they sound like killer stuff. They have Katja Stefanovic also doing vocals on this album, so perhaps they have added something with her adding depth to the album. But they haven’t added a good artwork and the phrase “The Waymaker wants to deliver music with a heavenly hope and guidance to as many as possible” is not promising as music with a message very rarely becomes good and usually Liljegren’s tend to be quite bad.

I don’t think anyone who have heard bands like Narnia and other stuff with Liljegren on voice will be surprised by what they hear as it might just as well have been an album of any of those bands. Modern and good sound, dreary male vocals, Katja is pretty decent but not overly impressive. There are no surprises here and not much variation either, so it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this album a bit predictable.

The opening track, the title track, is quite good and gives the album a very positive start. I like the catchiness and grandness of that song, but those elements are the reused and recycled through the album and for each song it becomes less interesting and less good. And in the end the album feels more like an “all filler, no killer” album as that opening track fades after playing it a few times and last time I played the album it felt completely uninteresting and my interest was wandering elsewhere dreaming perhaps of better albums or the death of religion.

If you can stand repetitiveness, preachiness, overproduction and another version of Narnia, or insert whatever catchy generic band in their place, you have a fine album for you here. I find this one, like most of the stuff where Liljegren is present, to be pretty dreary, almost unbearable. Not bad, just annoying and generic, I tend to feel a bit sorry for the guy as he never seem to evolve, never seem to go anywhere, and I find it strange and pointless when artists repeat the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, and again, like Liljegren does. The Waymaker gives us nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing exciting, just more of the same stuff that we have heard so many times before – there are so many better choices in the world of music, too bad albums like this make them harder to find as they dilute the pool with more nothingness.

HHHHHHH