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Mercenary - The Hours That Remain
Release: 2006Label: Century Media
By: Anders
Posted: Oct 17, 2006
Danish Mercenary is back with their new album, their fourth, entitled "The Hours That Remain" and their so far most artistic and impressive album, a journey into the world of melodic progressive thrashing metal with grandiose atmospheres and melancholic moments out of this world.
Where to start? Let's take off with the guitar work, amazing within its own terms, the basic riffs are catchy and contains a nice melodic approach and drives the music forward very well. All the melodic leads intertwined into the songs are captivating and enchanting, most of the guitars on this album will make any fan of melodic metal and progressive ditto wet his or hers pants in joy. The guitars are greatly backed up by the keyboards, which both delivers great melodic leads and spheres and more modern inspired samples and effects, it is all hitting it greatly off with the songs and adds to the overall impression, nice work. The heavy bass lines, keeping the rhythm in awe, together with the drums is good as well and enjoyable to follow, the bass is delivered by producer Jacob Hansen, and he has done a good job, both with the bass and the production. The sound is balanced, heavy and soft, it flows in a very organic way most of the way through the album, while still enforcing the music upon the listener.
A big part of the Mercenary universe anno 2006, is the vocals from Mikkel Sandager, damn that man can sing! His clean vocals hit it right off and compliment the music on this album perfectly, they really lift the album a notch, and it is a pleasure to follow his vocal-melodies and –harmonies, brilliant. The track 'Redefine Me' where Björn "Speed" Strid from Soilwork delivers his harsh scream behind Sandager's chorus-lines, works really well, the play between Sandager and Strid is awesome. The same can be said about the track, which actually works even better than the previous mentioned, 'Soul Decision', which is guested by the German Marcus Bischoff from Heaven Shall Burn, yet a really well-working play between the 2 vocal types!
"The Hours That Remain" is a damn fine album that offers many hours of enjoyable and marvellously listens! Mercenary has now slated themselves as one of the top exponents of melodic and progressive thrash metal, there are a lot of bands that needs to be on their toes to keep their position and not to be run over by the Danes! One of the best Danish releases this year, no doubt about that and I am sure it'll also make quite some noise around the globe due to the high class in all aspects surrounding this band!
Where to start? Let's take off with the guitar work, amazing within its own terms, the basic riffs are catchy and contains a nice melodic approach and drives the music forward very well. All the melodic leads intertwined into the songs are captivating and enchanting, most of the guitars on this album will make any fan of melodic metal and progressive ditto wet his or hers pants in joy. The guitars are greatly backed up by the keyboards, which both delivers great melodic leads and spheres and more modern inspired samples and effects, it is all hitting it greatly off with the songs and adds to the overall impression, nice work. The heavy bass lines, keeping the rhythm in awe, together with the drums is good as well and enjoyable to follow, the bass is delivered by producer Jacob Hansen, and he has done a good job, both with the bass and the production. The sound is balanced, heavy and soft, it flows in a very organic way most of the way through the album, while still enforcing the music upon the listener.
A big part of the Mercenary universe anno 2006, is the vocals from Mikkel Sandager, damn that man can sing! His clean vocals hit it right off and compliment the music on this album perfectly, they really lift the album a notch, and it is a pleasure to follow his vocal-melodies and –harmonies, brilliant. The track 'Redefine Me' where Björn "Speed" Strid from Soilwork delivers his harsh scream behind Sandager's chorus-lines, works really well, the play between Sandager and Strid is awesome. The same can be said about the track, which actually works even better than the previous mentioned, 'Soul Decision', which is guested by the German Marcus Bischoff from Heaven Shall Burn, yet a really well-working play between the 2 vocal types!
"The Hours That Remain" is a damn fine album that offers many hours of enjoyable and marvellously listens! Mercenary has now slated themselves as one of the top exponents of melodic and progressive thrash metal, there are a lot of bands that needs to be on their toes to keep their position and not to be run over by the Danes! One of the best Danish releases this year, no doubt about that and I am sure it'll also make quite some noise around the globe due to the high class in all aspects surrounding this band!
Rating: 9/10
Mercenary website
Distributed in Denmark and kindly supplied by EMI
Distributed in Denmark and kindly supplied by EMI
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