2014 has been a big year for the European heavy metal scene. Fan favorites from Accept and Epica to Iron Savior and Sabaton have released some of their best works this year. Among these giants is Emil Bulls, a band whose new album blurs the lines between rock and heavy metal.
To attach a label to Emil Bulls is a difficult proposition. Each song is distinctly different from one another and almost always fall into a different sub-genre. One moment you find yourself thrashing to death metal followed by tune that may be an inspired yet sappy love ballad or a bland, cliché ridden track written for the radio. This isn’t to say that the latest release by Emil Bulls is bad, it’s just a mixed bag that struggles, or quite possibly refuses, to be stick to one style for the entire album.
While a mashup of varying styles, all of the songs on Sacrifice to Venus feature heavy and/or melodic guitar riffs, driving bass lines, impressively technical drum beats, and a singer who can scream and growl as well as he can sing. Songs like ‘The Way of the Warrior,’ ‘Man or Mouse,’ and ‘The Reckoning’ have a straight heavy sound accompanied by angry vocals and lyrics suitable for getting your blood pumping, and while those songs are a few of the album’s major highlights, for every good song there seems to be a two songs that bring the experience down. The issue is that the band has an overly experiment feel, and while having an album where no song sounds like another is a great, the extreme shift in styles from song to song is quite off-putting for newcomers.
The album opener ‘The Grave’ is a standard death metal tune. Following ‘The Grave’ is ‘Hearteater,’ a more melodic track that eases up on the extreme vocals and adds guitar solos making for a more mature sounding album. Unfortunately, the third track ‘Pants Down’ throws out the melody and brings back the extreme vocals, but this time with an irritating emphasis on the old ‘sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll’ cliché giving the song an unsatisfying Americanized feel with the overly repeative lyric “We’re gunna party with our pants down.” This Americanized feel carries on over the next two tracks with ‘I Wanna Feel You’ taking a sharp turn into radio friendly territory with clean vocals, auto-tuned backing vocals. ‘Rainbows and Butterflies’ attempts to return the album to its melodic death metal side but falls flat due uninspired and rather immature lyrics such as ‘We don’t give a s**t ’bout rainbows and butterflies. We f**k your elves and unicorns doggy style. It’s too sad that we gotta burst your bubble. But neverland is in serious trouble.”
The worst of songs aside, when Emil Bulls decides to be serious with their lyrics, they show incredible potential. “The Way of the Warrior’ gets the blood pumping and the heart ready for battle and ‘The Reckoning’ is debatably the heaviest track on the record. “The Age of Revolution’ carries on with the power from the previous three tracks with a melodic chorus making for one of the most well-crafted tunes on the album. Unfortunately, this album seems to follow a pattern of two or three heavy tracks followed by two or three soft, cliché, or just plain uninspired tunes, followed immediately by two or three heavy tracks. Therefore, Sacrifice to Venus feels like two very different albums squashed together making for an unpredictable musical rollercoaster of an album that is hard to hate but even harder to love.
At a glance the highlights of Sacrice to Venus are first and foremost the skills of guitarists Andy Bock and Stephan Karl, and bassist James Richardson. Well versed in their craft, Karl and Bock are a force to be reckoned no matter if they’re playing a ballad or melodic death metal. Vocalist Christoph Freydorf has an unquestionable ability as a vocalist. Shifting from death metal screams and growls to an attractive clean singing voice is no easy task, but Freydorf does it with ease. The only real drawback to the album are the lyrics on a few of the tracks highlighted above. Should the band avoid the ‘sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll’ cliché and focus on more inspired lyrical content, Emil Bulls would be infinitely more attractive to more serious metal fans. 7/10
Emil Bulls is:
Christoph v. Freydorf – Vocals
Stephan “Moik” Karl – Guitar, Backing Vocals
James Richardson – Bass, Backing Vocals
Andy Bock – Guitar, Backing Vocals