By: Anders

Posted: Jul 8, 2006

This is the new "super" band, the much talked about collaboration between Björn "Speed" Strid from Soilwork, Thomen Stauch from Savage Circus, ex- Blind Guardian, Thorsten Praest, Oli Halzwarth from Blind Guardian and Sieges Even, Mi Schüren from Blind Guardian and Gonzalo Alfageme López. A lot of well known names, mostly within power metal and then Strid from modern metallers Soilwork of course. So what does this new band then offer, power metal with aggressive vocals or…? What would you say if I said, a melodic and technical blend of modern thrash and more traditional elements?

The music differs most of the time between heavy and crunchy thrashy riffs, and more traditional metal themes. Hard driven leads, heavy as fuck at times, at other times more classic heavy metal leads or solos, for again to shift into a heavy breakdown rhythm, with much distortion and samples accompanying the nu-metal shredding. The drumming is driven hard and varied well, Thomen does all the classic metal drumming as we already know he can, together with showing a more modern side of his drumming, good breaks and technical and wicked fills, his play on this album is very versatile. The bass play on the album is amazing, we all know that Oli Halzwarth is an amazing bassist, on this disc he delivers nice and technical play, as we know it from his main bands. Though we are also getting extremely distorted groovy, pumping, "jump da fuck up" play from his side. Mi Schüren do also deliver nice play, the keys doesn't play a leading role that often, though when the keys appear they lift the atmosphere, and the different samples utilized here and there works well in this context. The vocals from Strid are good, he utilize more or less his full agenda, which reaches from the most pissed off hardcore scream to the softest vocal, as in 'Reflection', an almost Pink Floyd-ish track, with a harder guitar line though.

The compositions on "Completion Makes The Tragedy" takes one around the entire world of metal more or less, and especially all the new and modern niches are being explored, most of them with good results. The song writing is good and often there is a good flow in the songs, even though some of them are kinda broken and hard to get through. The same goes for the album as a whole, there isn't really a red thread, as the band often moves east, then west, and then a bit south, it is always back and forth in experiments and new additions. But the music is very well played and there are many killer elements and details throughout the 12 tracks on this album, though Coldseed should be approached with an open mind, by people with very open minds, if that happens there is a lot to gain.

Rating: 7½/10

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