Jaded Heart
Devil's Gift

Lucky thirteen for Jaded Heart who gives us album number thirteen and it is a Devil’s Gift, but is it any gift we would like? It is comparable with its predecessor in terms of style and all of those things; I actually thought I was listening to the album of 2016 when I first started working on this album. And it is at least as unmemorable as the predecessor, but then again it isn’t a band that is known for their brilliant and fresh ideas but from time to time they happen to come up with some great stuff – like Fight the System from 2014. This time it is more a miss than a hit, unlucky thirteen perhaps when the songs don’t really add up to the quality of the band.

Unimaginative hard rock, or metal with lots of melody, strong vocals and catchy choruses. The sound is great and the songs that plays for little too long with 50 minutes for the jewel case version and over an hour for the digipak with bonus tracks. The songs can be described as being of the usual variety for an album of this style and there are no surprises among the eleven (or thirteen) tracks that are on offer. It is a fairly typically styled album of this genre and perhaps in a way I am a little bit surprised that a band wants to make the same kind of album over and over, especially when it is a generic kind of album – is there never a desire to use more imagination and create something more exciting?

Cowardly could be one way of describing it; safe could be another way of describing this album. I don’t know which is best but I do know that it isn’t exactly an album that makes me stop or take notice, or spit whatever I am drinking from the mad surprises the album offers. It feels like just another album and one more of the discography from Jaded Heart that I can do without; just like the previous one and for this one I think that the artwork is actually the most memorable thing. On the song count, there are mostly pretty ordinary and dull songs, One World stands out a little bit and is probably the only reason to even think of bothering with this album.

Keeping this album isn’t anything I will do and I will probably never return to it, it isn’t too bad just a really well produced but ultimately uninteresting album. It ends up in the digital thrash can, and then erased from the computer for all time. I think Fahlberg and company has a lot more potential than this and can’t help but wonder if they have lost all creativity and just makes album on routine, how can anyone be okay with doing the same stuff over and over for over 20 years. Perhaps it is interesting if you are a fan of Jaded Heart and especially their previous album, but to me it is an album that doesn’t add anything.

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