Re-Armed
Ignis Aeternum

I reviewed this band’s debut album in 2012, when the Finns made this album called Worldwide Hypnotize. I thought that album was a pretty bland, to be honest I don’t even recall it now – and I have an insanely good memory so it must have been some feat of boredom because even if I often write that I have forgotten albums and bands, or reviews to illustrate a point I rarely do. I remember almost every album I have reviewed, and the review text itself since we started this Hallowed publication in the early 2000s, but not this one. It seems as there have been some changes in the line-up since then and they have made two more albums and an EP. So, let’s see what this album can do, will it be more memorable than the first one?

It is melodic death metal here, I guess you can look upon it as Scandinavian in terms of style. They do not really come up with anything really exciting when it comes to songs and styles, the production is very good with a soundscape that is very strong. The vocals are fairly ordinary for the genre and doesn’t really make you take notice, in fact there isn’t much about this album that makes you sit up and take notice. It is a solid yet unspectacular album with top-notch production and too much playing time.

At first glance this album appears pretty good but after playing through it a few times this feeling subsides, and it feels like a pretty dreary release. The sound is great but the songs are pretty dull, the vocals drab and in the end I tend to feel like it was more a waste of time than anything else to play through this album. There is no novelty here, there are no fresh ideas, no outside the box thinking, just the same kind of melodeath that has been done by countless bands already. There is just room for a small amount of something before it loses its appeal, new albums in the melodeath genre needs to be a lot better than the earlier albums in order to make an impact and this doesn’t live up to that.

I end up thinking that if the first album was like this it is no big surprise that it is one of the few albums I have reviewed where I actually don’t remember the review or the album, or even the band. This is a pretty anonymous release that fails to excite and fails to bring anything really interesting to the stage. If you feel you have time to kill it might be a good album to check out, but there are way better choices in this genre.

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