Vader
Future Of The Past II - Hell In The East

Polish band Vader seems to be going down the nostalgic route covering some songs from the polish underground scene of the eighties and nineties. They say one reason is to show how great that scene was. So they gather twelve songs and do their own versions of those songs and release them on this album, it is the second time they compile and release a cover album. And of course when it comes to death metal and those things it has a silly cover art and Vader has generally not been impressive in my opinion, so what about this album?

Well, it is more varied and less sleep inducing than most Vader albums I have heard and that is of course a positive. The music is death metal, maybe a hint of thrash metal. Grunty vocals, blasting drums and all that stuff that is typical of the genre is apparent here so nothing new or inventive can be heard on this album. The production is really excellent though; it is dynamic and very nicely layered which is good. The vocalist is poor as he has been for the entire time of the band; he has kind of a sleep inducing voice. It is more varied than a usual Vader album as the songs are from different bands, maybe that should be a strategy for them to employ in the future and have different song writers for each song on their upcoming albums.

It is a decent album, nothing amazing or so but okay. The songs work alright and compared with other Vader albums I have heard this is probably the best, which may not say much as Vader is the only band I have fallen asleep when watching live so I am not really a fan of them or the genre in general. This is however quite decent and fairly listenable, not good but not bad either so it might work for some. Fans of Vader or the polish underground scene of the 80s and 90s might find this album quite appealing.

The album has a dozen tracks and none of them really stand out as anything amazing, it is a steady stream of decent tracks – the album doesn’t make you vomit but neither does it make you stand up and salute. It is okay and fans will probably enjoy it and the rest of us need not bother with it.

HHHHHHH