Year: 2020
Total Time: 66:58
Label: Napalm Records
Germany’s CREMATORY is a band that I vividly remember from the beginning of their career back in 1993 when they released their impressive for the period’s standards debut album “Transmigration”. With their next two albums they followed the same paths and went more and more popular, but then they started experimenting with their sound and I would say they swam, they reached a point that as we say they were stuck in mediocrity both commercially and on touring terms even though they were always fortunate enough to be in the arms of big record labels.
Today, almost after 30 years of career they release their new, 15th studio album with the feature title “Unbroken”. Why I would say that? If you listen carefully the same titled opening track with Robse from EQUILIBRIUM on guest vocals, you will understand very well, since this song is talking about their career through the years, their ups and downs and how strong and ready they still feel today in order to go on. The rest of the album contains 14 more tracks lasting over one hour, a fact that is at least impressive to say since they are not a new young band and definitely this big amount of creativity is very respectable since their quality level is still high. Musically, for one more time they are full of experimentations, their basis still is the melodic death metal with keyboards and extreme vocals from Gerhard Felix Stass (one of the two only remaining original members) with a lot of industrial elements, melodies, lots of grooving and a nice variety on vocals in beautiful combinations, even a little bit of jazz fusion in the song “I am” somewhere in the middle of the album. Powerful drumming and bass all over the album and also strong guitars that emphasize in the rhythm section and are providing with nice lead parts, all together are composing a total that you can hear with pleasure from the beginning till the end since with all this variety in influences you cannot get bored or lose interest, at least not without playing it once. On the negatives I would also put the same thing, that because of all this variety and big album length, I couldn’t find a lot of material that is above average, or better than what we usually characterize as “one of the same”, unless it’s just me since this kind of material is not exactly my favorite.
The best moments are of course the same titled song I mentioned above which is appropriate for some serious headbanging, the melodic “Rise and Fall” which reminded me a little bit of EDGUY (???), the heavy atmospheric “The Kingdom”, the groovy “My dreams have died” and the somewhat fast “Abduction” with the big industrial/gothic influences. After those top numbers we have “Behind the wall” for those who fancy industrial MARYLIN MANSON type sounds, the semi-ballad “Inside my heart” and “Broken Heores”, while it is really worth mentioning the ballad (yes, there is one of those in here) “Like the tides” that closes the album. For the die-hard fans we should also mention that there is a limited double disc edition with 6 bonus tracks!
So, to sum up, it is a pretty good record in total, I don’t think it will change something in the history of the band or in music in general, but it is a careful and honest release with lots of good moments and those of you who like this kind of music and experimentations should definitely check it out and have some pleasant time listening to it. If anything else, respect and thumbs up for the continuous course and offering from these german pioneers of melodic extreme sound.
Rating: 6.5/10
Editor: Antonis Livanios
Related Link: CREMATORY – Official Page
