Mercenary - 2023 - Soundtrack To The End of Times [mini-review]

(61:00; NoiseArt Records)



















Danish band Mercenary are out with the album "Soundtrack To The End of Times", and progressive metal is arguably the best classification for the landscapes explored on this production. It is a high impact and high intensity take on the tradition we get here, and one that comes with a liberal inclusion of extreme metal escapades. Just about everything here is served with something of a bombastic grandiosity, with pounding riffs and rhythms alternating with rich, majestic and grandiose constructions that weave in and out of the extreme metal landscape. Nods and inclusions of more regular progressive metal is a part of the experience too, with occasional side steps into both contemporary melodic metal and flirts with quirkier movements along the way, and with some space and room for more elegant and flowing details to make their way into these landscapes on occasion too. But this is a powerful, high impact and high intensity variety of progressive metal first and foremost, with music that correspond very well indeed to the name of this album. If a progressive metal based soundtrack to the apocalypse sounds like your kind of music, this is an album that could have been used for this very kind of purpose.

Olav "Progmessor" Björnsen, September 2023

Links:
https://mercenary.dk/

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