Style: Melodic death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: The band continues their thrashy melodic death metal but incorporates clean vocals for the first time.
Thoughts: I am insanely biased when it comes to Soilwork. I got into them with The Chainheart Machine and they have never once gotten close to touching that masterpiece. I was exceptionally excited for this album when it came out, but was rather disappointed when it first dropped. Over the years though my opinion has slowly mellowed out over my initial disgust.
My big problem with the album was not the clean vocals themselves, but rather how the band stopped being interesting when they started. They have all of these intricate melodies and harmonies going on during the harsh vocal sections but when the clean vocals come in the band stops all of that and just plays open chords and let Speed do all of the melody. It's a huge disappointment knowing what the band is capable of melody wise.
After listening to this album for roughly three decades at this point, I understand where my younger self was coming from but I don't care nearly as much as I used to. This album still has a ton of great melodies on it, much more so than the following five albums... so even though there is a bit of a letdown it's still a solid album overall.
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