Entry 399 - Soilwork - Natural Born Chaos

 

Soilwork... these guys have had such a spotty history with me it's almost comical. I started with The Chainheart Machine and it remains a favorite melodic death metal album to this day. Ever since then the albums have never quite lived up to that quality. Different albums hit different notes that get close but nothing has held my attention as much as their second album.

Natural Born Chaos was the last album I truly enjoyed of Soilwork for many many years. This was the first album where they really toned down the speed and doubled down on the keyboards and melodies being the main focus. Keyboards play a much much larger role than they ever did in the past, so much that they are one of the lead instruments found throughout the album.

This is also the first album where Speed really started developing his clean vocals. The previous album had quite a bit of them, but on Natural Born Chaos we get nearly half the vocals being delivered in a clean manner. While I was torn on this when the album first dropped, over the years I've started to grow fond of them, and in some cases I highly prefer the clean vocals to his harsher style.

I think when it comes down to it Natural Born Chaos feels more like a hard rock album than it does a metal album. It doesn't have the intensity that the first three albums do and the song structures are highly streamlined to the verse chorus style. All of this is not inherently bad, it's just different... especially for a band like Soilwork at the time.

Since this album Soilwork has gone all over the place musically, some albums have been lack luster and others have been decent. Natural Born Chaos though saw the band have a solid sound throughout and a decent album as a result. Not something I'll listen to often, but sometimes I have an absolute need to listen to As We Speak... so the record stays.