Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Mercenary
Label: Century Media
Release: 2008
Denmark’s Mercenary have been blessing us with a new release every two years since 1998, and the good part is that every record is an evolutionary step forward. Mercenary are a band that isn’t afraid to try new things and explore new territory in metal. When vocalist Mikkel joined in 2002, they added clean vocals and keyboards to their death/thrash metal roots and developed a relatively original, distinctive and pretty fresh-sounding brand of metal. The album 11 Dreams opened plenty of doors for them, its follow-up The Hours That Remain cemented their status as one of Denmark’s biggest metal bands, and now we’ve got their fifth studio album, Architect of Lies.
After the departure of founding member, bassist and growler Kral, Mercenary’s sound got a lot softer, and The Hours That Remain didn’t even have any growls. On Architect of Lies, new bassist/vocalist Rene Pedersen makes his debut in the growler role. Sadly, he’s nowhere near as deep as Kral, so his growls come off pretty feeble and sit closest to your average metalcore “semi-growl” vocals. The combination of growls and Mikkel’s clean vocals still sounds colorful, dynamic and varied, but with such average, even below-average harsh vocals, they lose a ton of punch. This time Architect of Lies consists of ten tracks that are, on average, quite a bit shorter than on previous releases. Unfortunately, the songs haven’t lost just in quantity but in quality too. Even though the production is clean and sharp, it can’t save the album from the lower, “metalcore-style” tuned guitars, which mostly grind out generic “chugga chugga” riffs. The solos, thankfully, are still here, and they’re solid, but sadly again not good enough for any of them to stick in your memory. Architect of Lies is really missing the magic and the mix of raw power and melody that the excellent 11 Dreams radiated so strongly. There are also fewer of the atmosphere-building keyboards, but luckily they still creep up to the surface and at times, sounding “Dimmu Borgir-ish”, add some weight to an otherwise rather feeble musical whole. Even though the songs are catchy and get into your ear quickly, they sadly don’t stay there for long, and they’re too similar to each other to be memorable the way, say, the title EP 11 Dreams was.
Architect of Lies is a solid but, sadly, pretty average record, and it’s probably even the weakest album in Mercenary’s discography. It lacks the creativity of 11 Dreams, the atmosphere of The Hours That Remain and the raw brutality of the older releases. Whether the Mercenary formula has run its course completely, we’ll find out with the next record.
Line-up
Mikkel Sandager – vocals
Jakob Mølbjerg – guitar
Martin Buus Pedersen – guitar
Morten Sandager – keyboards
Mike Park Nielsen – drums
René Pedersen – bass
Production
Jacob Hansen
Track list
1. New Desire 04:57
2. Bloodsong 04:47
3. Embrace The Nothing 04:51
4. This Black And Endless Never 05:40
5. Isolation (The Loneliness in December) 06:03
6. The Endless Fall 05:08
7. Black and Hollow 04:50
8. Execution Style 05:50
9. I Am Lies 05:43
10. Public Failure Number One 05:00
