SOILWORK The Ride Majestic CD (Signed) 2015

Soilwork spent the early 2000s getting called sellouts for writing actual hooks, then spent the next decade proving that melodic death metal and genuine songcraft were never mutually exclusive, and The Ride Majestic is about as complete a vindication of that position as the band has ever put to tape.

Released in 2015, this is Soilwork firing on everything simultaneously, Björn Strid's dual-threat vocals switching between vicious and soaring like it costs him nothing, the riffs dense and locked in, the production massive without losing the bite that keeps it honest. It's the Swedish melodic death metal blueprint executed by people who helped write it. Gothenburg has a long memory and this record respects it while doing its own thing entirely.

Signed by the full lineup: Björn Strid, Sven Karlsson, Sylvain Coudret, David Andersson, and Bastian Thusgaard. CD format, full length album, 2015. Sweden origin.

Fans of: In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, Arch Enemy, Scar Symmetry