Album Review: Volbeat - "Servant Of The Mind"

 

First new offering from Volbeat since 2019's Rewind, Replay And Rebound and for once there's a bit of expectation here. That album was an unexpected return to form after a slump which had gone on for a few albums before it so the big question here is - have they managed to keep the run going?

To be honest, the answer's no. Similar to a lot of Volbeat's output over the last decade or so, Servant of the Mind is a solid and workmanlike album, well-played and tight sounding but seriously lacking a spark to really make you want to cue it up for repeated listening. Opening track Temple of Ekur kind of sums the problem up - it's reasonable enough with a winding Therapy?-style riff underpinning it but it just doesn't stick in your mind. And when they go into latter day Iron Maiden proggy territory on the snoresome Sacred Stones and Lasse's Birgitta, it's difficult to resist the temptation to reach for the skip forward button.

Oh sure, there's the odd slight curveball such as the almost psychobilly stylings of Wait A Minute My Girl and The Devil Rages On but even then, the fact that Volbeat appear to have only one setting for their guitar and vocal sound means they don't stand out from the pack as much as they should. Given there was once a time (circa Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies) where their "Johnny Cash goes thrash" musical style seemed genuinely innovative, it's a real shame that they now seem to have sunk into just being yet another bunch of second division Metallica/Diamond Head clones.

Like I say it's frustrating more than anything because history shows us that Volbeat are clearly a band who know their way around a decent riff and hook but they're just so annoyingly limited in their scope these days that Servant of the Mind ends up basically being the metal equivalent of an Ikea lamp. And really, why settle for solid and workmanlike when you could go for something genuinely breath-taking, innovative and spectacular instead? Overall, it's very difficult to escape the feeling that this is a band whose golden days appear to now be a depressingly long way behind them.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌓🌑🌑🌑🌑 (6/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A brief return from the dead...

Image
  Yup, we're back. Don't all get excited at once. I’d been toying with the idea of doing an end of year list again this year and after a lot of umming and aahing eventually decided to go for it. As with last year, inevitably there were bumps along the way. As of the start of December, I thought this list would be around 40 albums but inevitably reading other people’s lists pointed me towards a bunch of stuff that had passed me by earlier in the year. Plus of course there’s always a few teasing buggers who put stuff out at the last possible moment. So 40 became 50 which became 60 which finally became 70. You lucky people. Actually though, reading through this list, the main thing that strikes me is that I think this might be the most musically varied end of year list that Nite Songs has ever done. From gentle acoustics through acclaimed indie veterans to punk thrash and good old fashioned scuzzy rock ‘n’ roll via some decidedly unexpected diversions (industrial folk music? Check...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #90: Soho Roses - "The Third And Final Insult" (1989)

Image
  "If you won't love me then I'll find someone who will!"  - Soho Roses  - So Alone The Soho Roses were a classic case of right band, wrong time. If they'd broken on to the scene in the last few years then they'd have had a ready made audience on the 21st century power pop scene and probably be regulars at Some Weird Sin and similar club nights in the Smoke. The reality? They broke through towards the tail end of the '80s and got lumped in with the dying embers of the Soho glam scene, leaving behind one sadly underappreciated album and a few EP's before self-combusting. In a way, I sort of see the Roses as a British version of Enuff Z'Nuff. Not so much in terms of their sound but more of the fact that they were a group crowbarred in with glam who weren't really a natural fit there and kind of paid the price for it - I've always thought Enuff Z'Nuff sounded more like a Britpop band with flashbomb guitars than a hair metal band. Oh sure, ...
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #19 - The Dictators - "Go Girl Crazy!" (1975)

Image
  "Set me free, I might know better when I'm older but till then..."  - The Dictators  - Weekend By some distance the oldest album we've featured in this column so far, I very nearly went for the Dictators' 2001 comeback album DFFD  for this feature similar to what I did with the New York Dolls GDR article a couple of weeks back but after a bit of umming and ahhing, I decided it really had to be the group's 1975 debut Go Girl Crazy!  just because it's arguably the great trailblazing US punk album that everyone's forgotten about. I guess that you could almost say that if the Ramones were the Sex Pistols of US punk then the Dictators were kind of like the Eddie & The Hot Rods in that they crashlanded just that one year too early to really reap the punk whirlwind when it took off in 1976-77 but if you listen to Go Girl Crazy! , it's got the fingerprints of a lot of bands who'd come along soon afterwards on it, especially da Bruddas. The big ...
Read more