Genre: Gothic Metal/Industrial Metal
Country: Germany
Year: 2014
Tracklist:
1. Apocalyptic Vision
2. Until the End
3. Shadowmaker
4. If You Believe
5. Inside Your Eyes
6. Kommt näher
7. Irony of Fate
8. Virus
9. Back from the Dead
10. Welcome
11. Antiserum
It has been more than 20 years since the release of Crematory's first album, being remarkable its slow but awesome evolution
Some elements have changed substantially, like the use of synths and the melodicity, which have both increased a lot, and the album structure. Others have endured, like the harsh vocals -which are exactly the same-, the German and English mix in the lyrics, and the style at its core. The progression has been slow, in general, but still each disk has its own feel, being easy to link any song to its album, only by listening to it.
Normally, this German band doesn't take more than two years to launch a new compilation. Indeed, the only exception to this has been, until now, because of the four years pause the band took on the year 2000, before releasing its best and more revolutionary album, "Revolution". This time, also four years have passed since the last compilation ("infinity"), and so, one may wonder if this time the revolution from "revolution" -so redundant- could happen again...
And yes. Antiserum innovates greatly respect to its predecessors. It's what a new Crematory album usually is, and more. It doesn't bring something significantly new, it maintains the band's essence intact, but refreshes it by the introduction of extra elements.
This time, the most obvious new element is the dissonance present in most of the tracks, except in "Irony Of Fate" and "Kommt Näher" -which has, by the way, the most catchy melody-. It kicks you in the ears from the very beginning of the album, till the end of it. It's present through all of it, in almost every song, and in almost every chorus. Most of the time it's ok, sometimes it's more than ok, but other times it's less than ok. In "Virus", the dissonance is unpleasant, in "Welcome" it just ruins the chorus, but in "Until The End" it makes the song interesting and attractive. It's clear the band's intention to make this element a distinctive one in this release, but it didn't work too well with a non-progressive style.
Another element added is the use of vocoder (as voice fx filter) in some songs, along with a more extensive use of trance music like instruments and effects. Sometimes, the band almost reaches an industrial metal style. This gives to the album a different and fresh vibe that separates it from its predecessors. However, this doesn't bring necessarily a good result.
The songs have a stiff modern structure, thus there is no novelty here. The album structure however is another matter. The band keeps changing it from time to time, sometimes just once after various albums. This time they've put once again an intro piece, and for the first time, as last track, the album title song. These changes may not seem too much, but they mark the band’s special vision of a particular composition style, in a particular epoch of its history. You can check through the discography the obvious similarities between a certain album structure -shared by various compilations- and a certain style in composition.
That first intro track matches the next one ("Until The End") more than it matches the whole album, feeling like part of that song. That takes away most of the relevance that an intro song must have in a compilation.
The first real song is, then, Until The End. It's a good song, one of the album's best ones. It has nice catchy tune in the riff, but it's weak at the chorus. In fact, the riff is better than the chorus, and the bridge has nothing to remember.
"Shadowmaker", the second song, suffers from the same disease, and the following pieces aren't better neither, till "Kommt Näher", which marks the album's climax. After that, again, the power and the composition quality descends up to "Welcome", which is a not-so-good song, ruined at some level by the dissonance present in the last chorus's segment.
Generally, in every release, Crematory puts as last track a melodic song. This time it's not the exception, however now this is the homonymous song album, and a bit heavy too. It's one of the best pieces in this work and a great way to end it.
About the price, we have to say it seems a little high for an eleven song compilation. Even more when one of them is just an unremarkable intro, none plays for more than five minutes -and for more than 4:30, in average-, and this is no way the best full-length release we've heard from this band. It's at $15.89 at amazon.com and at €15.99 at nuclearblast.de.
The Digipack version, as well as the Boxset edition, comes with two remixes of "Shadowmaker". If you have already listened to any Crematory's remixed song, released in the past, you may not be surprised by the poor quality of these new ones. So, don't get over excited about them and rush to get the more pricy album versions just because of these. It's better to just listen to them through a music stream service and save some bucks, because these don't worth the money they are asking for. The other goodies included in those sets, like posters and other shits, may be more interesting for a fan, though.
The audio isn't the best ever displayed by Crematory. It isn't superb but it's good enough to enjoy the powerful guitars and bass. It's a little tweaked with respect to the previous work, noticeable mostly in a deeper bass, even though it's hard to say it's superior. Here, the guitar has lost some relevance and the kick's bass seems too loud and overcharged, producing an unbalanced sound.
Overall, this band made another good but not excellent release. The album and every of its songs are lacking the consistency shown in disks like Revolution or Infinity . Even though some of them, like "Until The End", "Kommt Näher" and "Antiserum", are good ones, none will be remembered as one of the band's best ones. Some other tracks, like "Inside Your Eyes" are mediocre, at best.
As final comment, Crematory has always been a great and talented band, despite some unfortunate songs and Pray (2008' album). From its first album the band has improved in every aspect of its music, managing to leave its essence mostly intact. That's something pretty unique for a music group with more than twenty years of life. Of course, this can be attributed to the almost no line-up variation that the band has experimented through its history, but it's still something worthy of attention.
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