Review Summary: With a gritty, technical and aggressive assault the Danish thrash squad continues to be one of the respectable veterans of the genre.
Nine years into their second reunion, I think it’s more than obvious to anybody that Artillery will not drop an album that will be in the same league as their 1990 masterpiece “By Inheritance” and in some ways I think that’s completely understandable. If anything that record was truly one of a kind, with a combination of musical aggression, melodic sensibilities, compositional complexity and Middle Eastern influences unmatched by any other thrash metal band let alone Artillery. But that’s not to say their reunion was without a reason, as albums like “My Blood” or “When Death Comes” still managed to perfectly showcase the band’s energetic and twisted riffing with a heavy dosage of European heavy/power metal touches.
Things got a bit worrisome in 2013’s “Legions” which was a more streamlined, conventional approach to their tropes, but without the impact or memorability. Plagued by brick walled, modern production and the lack of energy in their songwriting it seemed the Stützer brother and co, have lost their touch of what made them a cult favorite band on the first place. Three years later we have Penalty by Perception and thankfully it seems Artillery recognized the mistakes and corrected their path, because this album shows a much more focused, old-school and aggressive side of them with an equally important reinjection of melody and orientalism into their riffworks.
The first half of the album expertly displays what we can expect to hear in the upcoming 53 minutes. Songs like the opener “In Defiance Of Conformity”, the title track or “Rites of War” positively soar with their, fast paced, intense and adrenalin-fueled riffing, stylish up-tempo gallops with melodic harmonies mixing with the tight chugging thrash rhythms. Even the mid-paced songs like “Mercy of Ignorance” and “Sin of Innocence” carry a varied and more technical structure by jumping between the crunching headbanging riffs and the old-school Artillery-like swirling patterns, and fortunately the latter is very much present in the rest of the album as well.
But the melodic touches have always played a major part in the band’s sounds and thankfully there is a very balanced displays between these sensibilities and the more hard hitting song sections. Singer Michael Bastholm Dahl who did a decent job in “Legions” shows off skills much better this time, with his dynamic clean singing playing a great deal in making the choruses getting a catchy undertone. He doesn’t carries the same aggression as Flemming Rönsdorf or the versatile approach of Soren Adamsen, but he fits well in the band. And if I mentioned melody, one of the highlights on the albums for me is the balladic “When The Magic Is Gone” with its great hooks, breezy clean guitar riffing and trailblazing solos.
Artillery is widely known as a band that presents their music with top notch instrumentalization and this album is no exception. The dynamite duo of Michael and Morten Stützer continues to be of the most powerful and underrated guitar powerhouses of the thrash metal genre, with their sometimes powerful, sometimes straightforward, other times technical twisting-turning riffs and breakneck shreddings. Stylistically they also show a much rougher, grittier approach on this album with a production both modern, yet refreshingly “dirty” in the right places. And not to mention the Middle Eastern inspired touches perfected on “By Inheritance” also remain present especially on the latter part of the album. “Deity Machine” and the closing “Welcome To The Mind Factory” ooze a playful combination of these tendencies, technicality and accessible rhythms, showing that band has enough fireworks in the pockets to fill an entire album that doesn’t runs out of juice in the halfway point.
“Penalty by Perception” doesn’t breaks new musical grounds for Artillery as nowdays they are pretty much a band with a formed and recognizable style, and they are most certainly self-aware of the elements and tropes that create the backbone of their songwriting. This album is basically a combination of these elements, with a much better execution that their previous one. It is certainly well on-par with many of their more fruitful and explosive efforts of the past even if this one doesn’t overwhelm like their true knock-out efforts did. Many times its the simple things that brings pleasure into life, and if it’s a raw, face-punching and less generic piece of thrash metal in 2016, I will take it without any complain
