Review Summary: Hammerfall’s embark on the Zombie concept within pop-culture proves to be detrimental to their own relevance as a band (like that hasn’t happened before).
It’s bad enough that Hammerfall has been lacking consistency since
Legacy of Kings, but it seems that they have no clue what they are truly doing to their career. Ever since their debut, they have been regressing in innovation, inspiration, and overall song writing quality. Worst of all, once an album of theirs seems to be promising based on the first few songs the entire album takes a turn in the wrong direction and free falls until the last second of the album’s duration. In
Infected, Hammerfall adds insult to injury (on their own free will, go figure) by shifting gears away from the corny fight anthems that have made them popular since their conception to something even more putrid: Zombies. Is it a shot for a different fan base? What is there to lose for a non-productive power metal band? After all, it is Hammerfall so nothing should be new/
Unfortunately, for Hammerfall they have never been known for their music outside of their singles, and
Infected displays no such luck of innovation beyond their promotional singles. The first song “Patient Zero” proves the law of logic behind Hammerfall. The song has a slow, generic guitar riff with half-ass singing from Mr. Cans and lousy drum work with a nonexistent bass. The same can be said about “I Refuse”, “666 – The Enemy Within”, and “Immortalized”. The only good thing about those songs is the considerable improvement in the melodic guitar work, but it doesn’t compensate the regressing rhythmic sections Oscar Dronjak and Pontus Norgren have been showcasing in the past decade.
On the bright side, they still put out a few catchy songs that can easily be along their ‘best of’ catalog. In this case, only one song can fit that category and it happens to be “Bang Your Head”. It’s actually quite pathetic really, especially from a band that has lived off of their singles more than anything. Hammerfall released three singles for
Infected; one them being “Bang Your Head”, another being a cover song, while the other was generic from the start was completely gay till the very end (and I don’t even use that terminology unless something really sucks ass, it sucks so hard I’m not even going to mention the song’s name).
In the short-run,
Infected may seem alright at first despite the obvious. However, the long-run effects are quite expected; everything will unravel for what it truly is: generic and uninspired. Even “Bang Your Head”, which is arguably the best song off the album, becomes staler than skin cancer on an old person. Overall,
Infected is something everybody needs to avoid with a 6 foot pole, and probably boil your ears if you literally sat through the entire thing.
