Thobbe Englund
Sold My Soul

I first heard Thobbe Englund a long time ago when I got over the first Winterlong album in the early days of the millennium. I did interview Thobbe around the release of his second Winterlong album. Since then a long time has passed and he has sold his soul to be in Sabaton and reclaimed it to go for his dream, or maybe not but the new album is called Sould My Soul and Sabaton don’t really have much of a soul so in my view he could have done. This album has a black cover and a dozen tracks and my lasting impression is that it is a little bit incoherent.

Classic heavy metal with a rather raw soundscape perhaps thanks to not using studio trickery as Thobbe Englund describes it. Some tracks are classic heavy metal tracks but there are some that are more akin towards doomier metal and to me those feels a bit out of place giving the album a rather incoherent feel. On the other hand you could describe the feel as more varied with songs of fairly diverse appearance. I like the raw power and the vocals by Thobbe, it would not be exaggerating to call this a fairly strong production.

Neither would it be exaggerating to claim that it is a pretty good album, with some really strong highlights but perhaps a little too incoherent to be a really strong album. There are several great tracks on the album where It Burns is the most notable one and I also like Trägen Vinner as it is good but also because it is in Swedish and I like Swedish. I kind of like this album as well, the raw sound feels like a great choice for this album and the highlights are really great. With that written though, I find this to be a little bit incoherent to really shine all the way through.

Thobbe has put together a pretty strong album here, I don’t know if he sold his soul to make it but those who like their rougher heavy metal should have a closer look as this album. As I stated earlier it is an album with some great highlights, I just think that those highlights and the other songs fit together well enough to make this a great album. It is however one for those who think metal has become too polished these days.

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