Soilwork
A Predator's Portrait

After an incredible debut like "Steelbath Suicide" and a gem of Swedish death metal "The Chainheart Machine", Soilwork are gearing up for the trifecta. "A Predator's Portrait" not only is it the third excellent work by the Swedish combo, it represents the turning point in their sound, which becomes definitely less furious, but more complex and refined, with a slight opening towards more "easy listening" territories.

With this, it cannot be said that "A Predator's Portrait" opens the commercial cycle of the band's production, on the contrary, perhaps it was the right evolution, the coordinate to follow to approach modern sonorities without denaturing the sound. But that didn’t happen, and as you all know, instead of progressing in this direction, Soilwork plunged headlong into the cauldron of the unclassifiable "swedishdeathemohardcore etc etc", forever renouncing their originality as artists.

However, with "A Predator's Portrait" it must be said that Strid and company transform into the missing link between the 90s Swedish thrash/death (At the Gates, In Flames) and the "core" sounds so in vogue in recent years. Unfortunately, as pioneers within a few years, they became desperate followers of the trend, and thus when the young guns (Killswitch Engage, Trivium and the whole NWOAHC trend) go out to headline European festivals, the old Soilwork sadly find themselves opening for them. It's not enough to have inserted melodic solos and clean vocals in the chorus to stand out, and so the continuous search for personality pushes the band to produce bland, flat, and inconclusive albums, increasingly trivializing their sound in desperate search of a global mainstream breakthrough.

"A Predator's Portrait" is a concept album, which recounts the story of a serial killer, whose distorted mind is musically portrayed with the typical violence of the Swedish thrash death combo, which although still anchored to their early style, manages to create evocative moments thanks to a greater dosage of melody, robust use of keyboards, and a nod towards progressive sounds. The tracks slow down and a marked versatility of technique and songwriting emerges; the use of clean vocals still rarely used in death metal remains a novelty and makes the sound more mature and fresh proposed by the six from Gothenburg.

Perhaps because they were the first, perhaps because it was truly a novelty in 2001, but the catchy and engaging choruses make the album unique, melodic, and powerful in equal measure, with which the alternation of old-school songs (Bastard Chain) perfectly goes hand in hand with more modern tracks like "Like the Average Stalker" and "Needlefeast", among the best ever produced by the Swedish combo. The album remains consistently at very high levels ("Neurotica Rampage", "Grand Failure Anthem") without signs of weakening until the long closing title track (which, among other things, features Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth as a guest).

Experiment or not? What is the dividing line between experimenting and remaining credible and giving in to the temptation to reach a broader audience? But then do changes in direction always lead to greater response? If an extreme band softens its sound, what is the certainty of reaching a larger audience?

Obviously none, and in the case of Soilwork, not only do we find at a certain point in their career a denaturing of their sound, but also a lack of attention towards their proposal immediately after the release of this (albeit excellent) "A Predator's Portrait". An album to dust off, mandatory especially for metalheads of my generation, if nothing else to imagine what they could have given us in the years to come: certainly something less insipid, harmless, and bland, like "Stabbing the Drama", "Sworn to a Great Divide" or the latest dreadful "The Panic Broadcast".