The Forsaken is one of the hardest working bands right now. This is the bands third album, in as many years, besides that the Swedes play a lot of concerts.

A lot of things in a short time, usually affects the quality of the done work, but that is not the case this time. Almost the opposite has happened, the band has become better. The base is still in modern melodic death metal, with a touch of thrash. But besides that does the band incorporate almost epic moments, take a close listen to ‘One More Kill’. The band has also dived into the pile of godly Swedish death metal releases and incorporated a fair amount of the late 80’ties death metal scene, and it works perfectly out. The fast as lightening and sharp riffing, mixed with heavy as fuck grooves and great blasts.

The 2 guitarists love for classical metal guitarists do also show throughout the album, more than once is a hint of neo-classical guitarplay caught in the great lead-work. Well all the guitar-work are great. Drummer Nicke Grabowski is also delivering a thundering effort, without a doubt his best in The Forsaken so far. Since the last album has the band been joined by a new bass player and he makes the 4 strings scream and sound very fucking brutal. And as always is the powerplant Sjöholm on top of the world with his insane vocals. Varied, grim and raw, just like there wasn’t a day tomorrow, great.

Once again has the band visited the Swedish wastelands and has spent some time together with Tommy Tägtgren. And he has made a great and smashing production, though its a bit atypical for him. It is a very organic and old school sounding production, but still tight and very sharp, again a job done good.

I can say, without a single second of hesitation, that this is The Forsaken’s best album so far. It has a lot of variation, it simply kicks ass from the beginning to the end, besides that does it offer a lot of technical goodies. There are tons of great breaks, tempo shifts and delicious work from the guitars. And the album offers compositions a bit away from today’s norm and the hammering and very hard hitting version of Metallica’s ‘Blackened’.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]