In my previous review of Memoriam, I said that three albums in three years was too much and there was a risk of quality reduction. The band proved me wrong me, as the preceding “Requiem For Mankind” was a killer album. But here, in the fourth full-length, it seems that things took their natural course.
With a new member in the line-up, after the drummer Andrew Whale (Darkened, ex-Bolt Thrower) left permanently (he had left for a while in 2018) and was replaced by Spikey T. Smith of Sacrilege. The rest are unchangeable from the beginning of the band: Karl Willets (ex-Bolt Thrower) on vocals, Scott Fairfax (Massacre, Benediction) on guitars and Frank Healy (Sacrilege, ex-Benediction) on bass.
The opener “Onwards Into Battle” made me think that something good is going to happen here as well. Awesome Bolt Thrower-riff and massive rhythm lay the right foundations. I wish it continued this way. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen. The rest of the album isn’t something special, with “harmless” riffs and a band that seems to have run out of inspiration since the steamrollers of the past are missing and the doomy parts are too many, making it tedious.
The tracks have very simple structures. Okay, I’m not saying that they played progressive before, but they didn’t look like they lost their appetite for music. Fairfax’s guitars in particular, with a few exceptions, lack of fantasy. The “war” rhythms are missing, as well as the characteristic huge sound that made you feel like a tank was coming towards you.
A typical example is “Mass Psychosis”, a song so bad that it seems like it was written in the first demo by a band that has just started playing and not by musicians with so many years of experience on them. Only the aforementioned “Onwards Into Battle” and “Failure To Comply” stand out, which are the first lyric videos from the album. Not by accident, I think. But the best is the devastating “Contempt Grows”, which is contained only in the Japanese edition along with a demo version of it (also a killer one).
Unfortunately, “To The End” does not continue what Memoriam had built with their three previous releases. It is not the death metal they can play. I hope that they won’t release the next one again in a year and wait until they compose a more careful musical result.
