Suicide Nation - "Jesus Crisis" (CD)

Swedish heavy thrashers Suicide Nation made their debut in 2005, entitled “Evilution”, and the follow-up “Vaya Con Chaos” came two years after. Keeping the two-year sequence, they unleashed their third effort late 2009. It’s however definitely not too late to review it! I hadn’t heard their earlier releases when their third effort ended up in my mail box. Now I have to get those, too, because this friggin’ rocks!!! Imagine a mix of Black Label Society, Mustasch, Spiritual Beggars and Soilwork. Heavy, raw, skullcrushing metal with a touch of thrash mixed with a fat stonerish vibe. These guys know how to write earth shattering riffs! It’s however not without dynamics which shows already in the second track “Holy Book, Holy Lies, Holy Water” with its clean guitar parts thrown in. They’ve also got a really cool heavy groove going on, which they prove in stomper “The Load”. The track “Hypocrite” sounds quite a lot like LOK but with more melodic vocals and in English and with a guitar solo. Killer track, indeed! Daniel Löfgren is a rough edged singer with a broad vocal spectrum, from cool soft almost bluesy vocals, like in the melodic “God Is Not The Answer” (hmm… do I sense a lyrical theme here?) to pure brutal gutsy roars like in opener “Remains”. At times he reminds me a bit of Spice (ex-Spiritual Beggars) but with a bit more variation. This is all in all a really evenly strongs album. No classics maybe, but definitely not any fillers. Each track has its own right to be there and fills its purpose, which is to make this one solid rocker of an album. Great production, too! Highly recommended indeed!

Janne Stark

Year: 2009

Label: Godsize

Country: Sweden

Link: http://www.myspace.com/suicidenationswe