Music: God Dethroned: Passiondale

Our Take

While I did like God Dethroned’s The Toxic Touch back in 2006, compared to a lot of the other melodic death metal albums at the time it just didn’t stack up. And considering that the group had transitioned over the years from a more blackened death metal style to a melodic one over the years, this wasn’t that surprising. Nearly three years later it appears that they have finally completed that transformation and really focused their energy on creating a cohesive piece of work, as their eighth full length release Passiondale is a concept album based around the Battle of Passchendaele from World War I. The results are outstanding and a lot better than most might expect, and this is easily the most interesting effort that God Dethroned has released in quite some time.

One of the issues that I had with this band’s previous effort was that some of the instrumentals felt a little flat, almost as though the members were just going through the motions. This time around they sound a little more inspired, as not only is there a lot more energy but the songs have more variety and stand out from one another. As I mentioned earlier, in recent years the group has begun heading in a melodic death metal direction and it has finally paid off as Passiondale has plenty of atmospheric and epic sounding melodic leads that are sure to keep listeners coming back. Although there are quite a few bands that play this style of death metal, with this release God Dethroned is back near the top and are sure to gain some new fans as well as bring back some of the old listeners they once had.

If you’ve listened to God Dethroned before, Henri Sattler’s low pitched growling style should sound familiar as his vocals have not changed that much over the years. What I’ve always liked about Sattler is that despite the fact that his growls are very low, it is still fairly easy to understand what he is saying and because of this the lyrics are often easier to interpret. This definitely works in the band’s favor on Passiondale, as this way listeners are able to get a better sense of the topics from the Battle of Passchendaele that they focus on. In addition to this, there are also a few tracks where the group chooses to implement clean vocals and although this may deter some of the metal purists listeners who don’t mind the style will find that they fit well with the more melodically oriented leads.

Long time fans may not feel that Passiondale is God Dethroned’s best effort to date but it does certainly stand up there with some of their more noteworthy releases. The concept works well and the material is generally more interesting than before, making this disc one worthy of your time. Overall, though there is a lot of competition within the genre this year Passiondale still manages to be a top contender and is just another example of how many good metal albums we’ve seen in 2009 so far.

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Chris Dahlberg
October 16, 2009