Veterans
Fake Quiet and Peace

It is claimed that the members of the band Veterans have more than just one foot in the grave, hence the name I suppose. Clever to name a band of greying old men Veterans, not that they look that ancient on the press photos, but the right lighting and angle can make things look a lot better than they actually do. And there is photoshop as well. Despite the old age, this is the first album by Veterans, and it certainly looks exciting if I check the cover art.

Musically it is heavy metal with a rough-edged and thrashier voice than is more common in the heavy metal genre. Fairly heavy with eight songs that are quite similar through the whole thing, but the short playing time makes up for the lack of variety in the songs. The style itself is pretty typical in many regards, we have heard this kind of music before, but the sound is modern and quite powerful – I like the production. But I would not mind a few more fresh and exciting ideas in order to make these veterans stand out a bit.

The experience would certainly make for this confident and solid effort, but if you have a foot or two in the grave it is probably better to be braver. If your selling point is that you are near-death it may be wiser to play each song like it is your last, that is not something I hear when listening to this album. I think the ending song is probably the best, when they also dare to make observations about our world, but none of the tracks really take flight and impress. Maybe it is the tiredness of old age and infirmness.

With age comes experience and often confidence, traits that are quite obvious when listening to this album. But you also lose imagination and your field of view narrows when getting older, and this perhaps a result of that. I think they should try to make it as if this was the last thing they did, I doubt the album would have sounded this bland if they actually believed they had most feet in the grave. This is a fine debut, and far from deserving cremation or burial, but it isn’t an album that will make any major impression in the world of music.

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