Tirades of Truth: Mercenary - Metamorphosis

Holy crap! I thought when Times of Grace released their debut, that it would easily be my favorite album of the year. If not Times of Grace, then maybe Trivium or DevilDriver, but Mercenary? Never. They dumped their "clean vocalist" and keyboardist (not that big to me) and their first single didn't really do much for me. I was worried about the production. Well they are streaming the entire album HERE and let me tell you...it's amazing. By the way, while you are listening to the stream, check out THIS. A nice explanation of the songs and their origin. Funny see the explanation of The Black Brigade.

I have listened to this stream a couple of times and I can't believe how good this is. The loss of the clean vocalist isn't even noticed. There are a couple of times I thought he came back to record a couple of songs, Velvet Lies anyone? And well...keyboards? Who needs them? They even put in a cool orchestral piece in In a River of Madness. Rene has such a range and would probably make my top 10 list of vocalists if I redid it. He goes from singing, to growls, to death, to almost a rock voice. It's amazing.

One thing that makes Mercenary one of my favorites is the pure "heaviness" they are able to create. I mentioned The Endless Fall before, and Metamorphosis is no different. There are parts of songs that make my speakers almost explode. I used to think Fear Factory or even DevilDriver were the heaviest band I had, but I am wrong. Mercenary takes it easily.

So is there anything wrong with this album? Not sure. I would probably have to listen to it more, but the one thing that caught my attention was that the solos weren't too impressive. But honestly when you can create riffs that would probably scare a little kid I can let the super Eddie Van Halen solos slide.

I can't wait to get this on CD so I can hear a better quality than a web stream.

One last thing...their new logo. I have their old logo on the top of my page, under Metallica. But the new one is pretty cool a lot better than their old one. Seriously, how cool is this thing?

A lot more "in your face" than before. Another nice touch. Do I dare call the album of the year now? It's kind of hard not to.