Soilwork - Verkligheten (2019)^{Release ID: 5198}

Working The Same Old Soil

Soilwork return after the fairly successful and well received 2015 album The Ride Majestic, which was my first experience with Soilwork before diving into their earlier releases. Verkligheten was an anticipated release for me since the single, "Arrival", sounded like solid, classic Soilwork material. The tone and style of Soilwork and their ability to transition abruptly from heavier death metal riffs to clean, more melodic/progressive passages was always exciting and interesting to me.

That being said, this album sounds a bit too much like Soilwork in the end. No reinventing, no surprises, no spice. I still love the overall sound of the band throughout the album, save a a track or two, but overall Verkligheten is pretty uninteresting. Song structure is repeated on almost all the tracks, a lot of the choruses seem extremely generic and almost too mainstream/sing-songy ("Full Moon Shoals") for the overall style and sound of the album. There are definitely interesting parts in each song, but they get bogged down by the mediocrity of the product as a whole. They throw in some really good riffs and interesting shake-ups like the addition of female backing vocals in "Stålfågel", but the middle portion of the album is a snoozefest.  

Verkligheten redeems itself a bit on the final two tracks, "Needles and Kin" and "You Aquiver", but not enough in my opinion. Still a solid release all things considered, since it's hard to make the formulaic Soilwork sound be straight up bad, but it leaves a lot to be desired. Verkligheten has a few good singles that make it an above average release, but as an album it falls flat. This honestly reminds me way too much of "Battles" by In Flames, where the In Flames sound is still there, just wrapped around weak and generic writing and a cookie-cutter sound choices.