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The Richmond-based band Lamb Of God is around for a decade, but the predecessor Burn The Priest started in the mid-90's. With their last 2 albums they get a little more melodic, but with Wrath they kinda return to the sound of their early days. But the opening of The Passing is based on acoustic guitar and even when the band joins in the short instrumental track stays melodic. They are back on track with In Your Words, a fast, raw tune with growls. The speed changes, some parts are more mid-paced while some are faster or only have fast drum parts. The song has some complexity, but also aggression The guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler add some melodic parts, but the song is too bulky to be catchy. For Set To Fail they speed up. A break and some up-tempo guitar-driven part follows. Here and there the influence of bands like Slayer and early Metallica shines through. Contractor sound like an old recording... The mix is a bit unbalanced, coz the bass is most of the time inaudible, only during a short part when everybody else steps back. The wall of guitars is drowning it.... At Fake Messiah they use a poor drum sound in the beginning, but it seems to be more an effect, coz later the drums sound better, even if I'm still not convinced by it. Randy Blythe switches between raspy vocals and growls, but his vocals push the guitar melody into the background and so takes away what might have hooked you up. Grace starts slowly with melodic guitar play and shows them quite differently, but then they explode into a guitar-based track with hammering drums and pumping bass. The guitar play is very cool and the vocals are almost catchy, this one is so far my favorite! It can hook you up without loosing heaviness and aggression! After another quite raw tune called Broken Hands they head into Dead Seeds which offers melodic guitars on top of a forcing rhythm section. The aggression and meanness are only coming from the vocals! Not bad at all! And they are back to attack! Everything Is Nothing is bringing back their early days... But again the guitar play sticks out. The closer is Reclamation and again they use acoustic guitars to lead into this long track and as you expect they soon go full force. But they get back to the opening theme for a brief moment. Its the contrast between the slow passages and the heavy parts.
Personally I prefer tracks like Grace, Reclamation and Dead Seeds, but the ones of you who love their heavy, raw side, will prefer Fake Messiah and Broken Hands. So, check Lamb Of God out and make up your mind!
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