When giving any sort of praise to Volbeat, it almost always has to be accompanied by the qualifier ‘enough’. In a hard rock scene that finds its key players smushed against its positive or negative extremities, Volbeat are good enough. When talking about where the decay of their old metal-meets-rockabilly shtick has left them, they’re still distinct enough. And when the hit-having process can leave full albums as a passé endeavour to some, Volbeat are doing it consistently enough.
It’s not a discussional tactic that inspires much fervour, but neither do Volbeat themselves. They’re nice to have around for Michael Poulsen to lend his European voice to the Yank-Fest, but that’s predominantly it. They fit in while they’re there; they mingle; they do what’s expected of them; and then, on the next cycle, it’s all repeated once again. So, what does the effort to break away from that look like, and be more than ‘enough’? Well, you’d presume that’s the question that fuelled God Of Angels Trust, given how it feels and the ways in which Volbeat got to that point.
For a start, it does sound pretty good on a consistent basis. With a solid Metallica homage in the opening riff of Devils Are Awake, it’s a high gear that the album kicks off on, and typically stays around that range. It’s also well-trodden ground for Volbeat, be that through the usual sound they’ve developed, or in once again recruiting Jacob Hansen to produce, who’s had such a critical role in finishing their sound since their debut in 2005. In every move it makes, God Of Angels Trust is a true-to-form Volbeat album, and one that’s pleasingly keeping its metal side in business. Even without an Anthrax alumnus this time to keep that metal cred alive, there isn’t a lot about this album that misses Rob Caggiano, given how songs like Demonic Depression and Better Be Fueled Than Tamed comfortably work the space on their own. On an initial level, all seems to be going smoothly for Volbeat.
Apply even an ounce of pressure to any other element, however, and you’ll be amazed at how quickly this begins to crumble. And it all seems to traceable to one critical piece of information about God Of Angels Trust—the fact that the album was written and recorded in just five weeks, described in the accompanying press release as “[wanting] to work quickly and rely on instinct”. So, what exactly does that say about an album whose flaws are so plentiful and preventable? For one, maybe “instinct” isn’t the greatest gauge of success. For another, you can’t rely on happy buzz-phrases to obfuscate when an album feels so blatantly phoned in. (Hell, “wanted to work quickly” doesn’t even sound like a positive!)
Sure, it’s a good sound that Volbeat have here, but they don’t do anything with it. It’s almost completely lacklustre in feel, where a chorus or two is rolled out on By A Monster’s Hand and Acid Rain to sate the active-rock radio playlisters, but everything else seems to fall by the wayside. For the most part, God Of Angels Trust does come across like a rushed product, where it wasn’t suitably tightened or refined because there were no opportunities for that. Thus, it’s a very uninviting listen compositionally. It frequently isn’t memorable, and when it is, it’s in the case of In The Barn Of The Goat Giving Birth To Satan’s Spawn In A Dying World Of Doom, where the rock ‘n’ roll opening leg getting clunked onto a standard metal body is more frustrating than that title is egregious.
But the problems run deeper than that, namely in the lyricism and how clear an afterthought it was. To be clear, no one’s expecting Volbeat to be transcendent wordsmiths; their allusions to devils and demons are no more or less explorative than when they were circumstantially around gangsters and gunslingers on past albums. A bit of basic competence wouldn’t go amiss, though. That way, they could maybe avoid how incoherent any sentiment is outside of an easy-to-parse vibe, or, y’know, multiple basic grammatical errors! This isn’t like the gibberish of System Of A Down or Fall Out Boy where there’s at least a thread to be picked; it feels more like a first draft or an improv, and certainly doesn’t lend credence to the merits of ‘relying on instinct’.
So let’s just call it as it—God Of Angels Trust feels lazy. Quite clearly, you don’t craft an album that’s up to the best of your abilities in a month and a bit, though why it took Volbeat up to their ninth to figure that out is anyone’s guess. But considering how easy it would’ve been to fix its myriad issues with just a bit more time—re-draft some compositions; tweak some ideas; fucking proofread—God Of Angels Trust appears all the worse by the end of it. Even the title heralds the worst to come—it’s either a nonsense phrase that its missing apostrophe would only barely rectify, or a graceless shove-in of the acronym ‘G.O.A.T’, which probably made Volbeat feel really, really clever. Sorry to burst your bubble, gents, but this is barely your usual standard of ‘enough’, let alone the ‘greatest of all time’.
For fans of: Alter Bridge, Danko Jones, Metallica
‘God Of Angels Trust’ by Volbeat is released on 6th June on Republic Records / Universal Music Group.
Words by Luke Nuttall
I just want to note that this is possibly the worst music review I’ve seen. First, the crux of it is a bad-faith interpretation, and missing the context that Michael Poulsen wanted to take this writing and recording approach in contrast to a prior one. He wanted the music to be more spontaneous and the recording more raw, less layered. In fact, it’s an approach he started taking again with the previous album, Servant of the Mind.
Within the same paragraph emerges the next flaw, which is that the criticism often comes with the word “feel.” The album feels phoned in (and “comes across” as rushed), it’s lacklustre in feel, the lyricism feels like a first draft. And of course, it feels lazy — a proclamation that arguably approaches the level of self-parody given the conceited fanfare of “let’s just call it as it [is]…” None of it is really substantiated; there’s hardly any compositional detail given to explain why the album is so uninviting.
Note the missing word in that last quote, by the way. I found two instances of that, one erroneously repeated word, and a use of “worst” that I’m pretty sure should be “worse” instead. So to profanely suggest the band do more proofreading is somewhat ironic. Indeed, it seems like this very review may have been a rushed product.
I think taking issue with the lyrics in terms of grammar is, also, pedantic to put it kindly. In all my experience of reading and hearing verse, I’ve never seen or heard a strict adherence to grammatical rules. To be clear, I don’t listen to Volbeat with as much focus on lyricism as I do other bands. I do think the lyrics are effective nonetheless, and that they’ve even gotten stronger over time. That song with the supposedly egregious title, for instance, has some very nice wordplay within.
As I’ve listened to it many times thus far, I find the song itself wonderfully over the top and theatrical, yet still cohesive. A key characteristic is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, in contrast to this review. And if the gents were to read it, I think they’d probably chuckle and move on.