Coldworker – The Doomsayer’s Call

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With a nearly four year lapse between albums, Coldworker looks to build a solid fan base with it’s latest release The Doomsayer’s Call. For a band that’s not as well known as fellow countrymen Soilwork or Scary Symmetry, Coldworker will have to demonstrate that they’re not just another “me too” band playing Swedish death metal. Does The Doomsayer’s Call successfully make the case for Coldworker? Well…no, not really. Read on to see why.

The main problem with The Doomsayer’s Call is just the ho-hum feeling that the album has. At no point is it terrible, but on the other hand it’s never impressive or memorable. The guitars are almost always one-dimensional, never truly changing it up and surprising you throughout the course of the album. This creates an almost monotonous tone to the album that continues throughout it’s 45 minute run-time that makes listening to the album all the way through a chore. You might not notice it during the first few songs but by the time “Murderous” comes on, you’ll seriously bemoan the lack of variation in a lot of these riffs.

Drums are also an issue on The Doomsayer’s Call, never really coming into their own on and failing to excite the majority of the time. Drummer Anders Jakobson only serves to keep the song moving  and never seems step outside of his comfort zone; again the name of the game for Coldworker on this album seems to be mediocrity. They’ll never make you roll your eyes in disgust or anything, but most of the time they might as well be non-existent. I know Swedish death metal is pretty rigid in it’s structure and everything but you’ve got to be more interesting than this.

Throughout the album, I found myself constantly looking at the length of each song and wishing they were shorter. Most songs drag on and on, and they probably only average three or three and a half minutes long. Of course, if you do happen to hit the skip button it doesn’t really matter, because almost all of the songs on The Doomsayer’s Call sound the same anyway. The lack of variation just absolutely brings the album to a grinding halt from the very start. The songs themselves are forgettable and missing one very important ingredient altogether: catchy hooks! There are almost none; which means that songs mostly stick together like glue and are just on the whole completely unimpressive.

The biggest problem is that there are bands that do the same thing that Coldworker is trying to do, and do it much, much better. There is literally no reason to listen to them when you have the aforementioned bands Scary Symmetry and Soilwork pumping out songs with memorable riffs and incredibly catchy hooks (I mean seriously, have you listened to The Panic Broadcast ? Creating hooks that catchy should be illegal). It would be one thing if it sounded like Coldworker was trying to take a different route with their music and create something different, but if they were you wouldn’t be able to tell by listening to this album.

 

Anthony
Anthony
Long Island, New York based metal enthusiast.
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