Soilwork — Natural Born Chaos

Soilwork's new album, "Natural Born Chaos", is the logical follow up to last year's "A Predator's Portrait", an album I enjoyed a lot because of its great songwriting and the catchiness of the melodies; elements that are lacking in a lot of metal bands in my opinion.

The band was formed, under the name Inferior Breed, at the end of 1995. They mostly played metal in the vein of Machine Head and Pantera. But as time went by they started to get more interested in more melodic music. By the fall of 1996, they decided to change the name to "Soilwork" to fit with their new sound. By then they were rooted in the "Göthenburg" scene and comparisons with bands like At The Gates and Dark Tranquillity were made. After releasing two impressive albums on Listenable Records, Soilwork signed a deal with Nuclear Blast and released "A Predator's Portrait"; an album with a shift towards poppier melodies and catchier songwriting. It was also the first time Soilwork used clean melodic vocals.

The only drawback from "A Predator's Portrait" was the messy production, luckily this time the band chose Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad, Ocean Machine, Terria, etc) to sit in the producer chair and he did a great job. The sound is crystal clear, but not overproduced and there is still an aggressive edge to the sound.

The whole album is of a consistent quality and I really can't find any bad song. Just listen to the fine opener "Follow The Hollow" or the second song "As We Speak", which has some great synthesizer lines, to be convinced. And I must not forget to mention the title track and its very catchy chorus. There is just too much good stuff on this album to mention it all in this review.

If I was in a store and had to choose only one metal album from the last five months, I would definitely pick this one. "Natural Born Chaos" is a great album which, for now, ranks high in my best of 2002 list.