With metal progressing and in some ways regressing back to the days of yore, when a riff could stand for itself with its intricacy and innate brutality, Chimaira has come back to make their mark in the metal scene with their latest attempt Resurrection.
From their 2003 release The Impossibility of Reason to their self-titled album in 2005, the band made a huge jump, evolving into a more technical outfit than an angst ridden thrash band, however seemed to be too large of a jump for their own good. The album felt forced and seemed to drag on with unnecessarily long tracks just for the sake of it. With Resurrection Chimaira stays on the technical side, but has truly honed in their songs, writing much cleaner guitar lines, and bringing in influences from the early days of thrash to the creative prog-based bridges like the one featured in the song “Pleasure in Pain.”
Resurrection has the flow an album should, it varies enough to keep the listener intrigued, but doesn’t stray to far enough away from their comfort zone to sound forced. Even with their approaching 10-minute long track “Six” the band finds ways to creatively structure their songwriting to keep the listener on their toes. They even feature an instrumental part in the middle of the song that can keep up with some of the classics in the industry.
That being said, the album still has its faults, mainly the topical subjects of the songwriting. Now don’t get me wrong, you can’t get much more metal than talking writing a song called “Killing the Beast,” but chanting the lyrics “Killing the beast, killing the beast, kill” get really mundane and make it sound like more like a pagan sacrifice than the internal metaphor vocalist Mark Hunter is striving for. The slow chugging of the repetitive of the close to single guitar chord and primitive drum beat really don’t help the songs case either.
Resurrection stands out in their discography for song writing ability, it’s clear to say they’re evolved for the better over the years. Their guitar lines are smoother and far superior to their earlier works, as with their production on this album, which can be credited to Jason Suecof (Trivium, God Forbid). Hunter even tries out some different styles to stretch out his signature growl, showing off his vocal chops. All in all the album is a great stepping stone and hopefully they’ll be back for yet another disc in a couple of years with even more progression, and will keep bringing the shred.
7/10
