Tirades of Truth: Deadlock - Bizarro World

This year started off pretty fast for new music. There are a ton of good to great albums that have already come out and we haven’t even hit the half way mark. One of these albums that came out that peaked my interest was Deadlock’s Bizzaro World. I talked about it earlier and have finally had some time to sit down and give it a good listen and give a review of it.

I have been listening to Deadlock since Earth.Revolt. They were a standard melodic death metal/black metal band. Nothing special. Then they added Sabine Scherer on vocals to give them the male/female combination that other bands have. They hit their stride with their first full length album, Wolves, with the dual vocals. It was a breath of fresh air in the stale world of melodic death metal. What stood out on that album was End Begins. They added in a straight techno bridge into the song and it was really amazing to hear for the first time.

On the follow up, Manifesto, they experimented a bit more with a saxophone solo (Fire at Will) and some rapping (Deathrace). I think they pushed the proverbial envelope a bit too much there. They brought back the techno elements for the opening “track” (The Moribund Choir vs. The Trumpets Of Armageddon) which was really cool to hear it blend into Martyr to Science. But overall it felt like a let down compared to Wolves.

So that brings us to Bizarro World. This album feels like Killswitch Engage’s Daylight Dies album. It’s not a bad album, but it’s got the whole “been there, done that” feel to it. They cut back on the experimenting a bit, leaving it on basically one track, Renegade. They incorporate drum & bass into the song. Some have said it is too much, but this song is classic Deadlock. Lyrically they go away from the “save the world” lyrics of Manifesto, but some are pretty rough. Listening to Brutal Romance is painful at times. The whole “it takes two to tango”…ugh.

So what do I mean by the “been there, done that” feel? Deadlock is falling into a pattern with their writing. They will go blazing fast with the guitars & drums while the death vocals are going, but when Sabine comes on, they slow down. It’s predictable for this genre of mixed vocals. There are a few songs where the music doesn’t completely slow down, Virus Jones is one of them and it works nicely as an opener.  It stays in a more of a rock feel, but still no where near the metal just played seconds before.

You want an album to be memorable and this one has a couple of memorable songs, but once again falls short of Wolves. It is better than Manifesto though. I would love to see them speed up while Sabine sings. This is a tough year for my top 10 list, but this still has a solid chance of getting in.