Trail of Murder
Shades of Art

Bollnäs is a small Swedish town with around 12’000 inhabitants and from there comes quite a few well known bands like for instance Tad Morose or Morgana Lefay with whom several of the band’s five members have been playing. The name of this new band had me a bit intrigued though, murders in such a small town are there any murders of significance that has happened there? When looking this up I notice that there is and a quite gruesome one at that with three young and seemingly ordinary guys killing and dismembering another guy. So there is some murders going on there and to be honest this album should also have had some murdering before going out to the public as well, but I’ll get back to that later in the text.

Heavy meal is the genre, melodic, and quite catchy one at that with a decent tempo for most part as well. The sound and production is excellent with it sounding clean yet very powerful, this is probably thanks to the collaboration with very skilled and acknowledged mixing guy Jonas Kjellgren. For you who though Urban Breed was something other than a Swede singing I can reveal that he is an excellent singer and all who has heard him before will be able to imagine how it will sound on the vocal front. The album is also quite dynamic and varied over the twelve tracks it contains, it lasts for around 52 minutes.

I would call this a very good album, it has enjoyable tracks, the sound is excellent and that makes it a great album to enjoy for most occasions. It does however have a small problem in that there are just not enough murdering of darlings done, meaning that it is a trifle too long which is something that makes me a tad morose towards the end of it. I think they should have killed of at least one, maybe even two and most tracks could get the axe without really effecting the quality in a negative manner. It would be positive in the end as you would be left wanting more rather than feeling relieved that it is over and you can move to the next album when it ends. A rule of thumb for a band should always be to leave the listener wanting more rather than the other way round and I always prefer an album too short than too long, there are no exceptions to this fact and 50 minutes is usually the upper limit.

“Life in shades of art, tell us who we are - Sunlight and shadows, reflected in my heart - Life in shades of art, and every time we part - Sunlight and shadows, life is shades of art” that is the chorus of the best track of this album, the title track if you could not deduce it from the lyrics. It is a great energetic rocker that is a real hit song which is slightly better than anything else on this album. But it is not alone in making an impression as the second track Carnivore is another source of greater enjoyment as well as the track called Your Silence. That trio are the tracks I remember the most from this very good album which I probably will be playing more even though I am now finished with the review of it.

In the end I can just say that with some murdering it could have been better but it is still a really good album that I recommend you to take a closer look at, it will be worth it.