UMUR
"Godfallos" is the 4th full-length studio album by Danish metal act Dominus. The album was released through Progress Records in 2000 and was the last album by the band before they disbanded in 2000-2001. Lead vocalist/guitarist Michael Poulsen would subsequently go on to form the more commercially succesful Volbeat (named after Dominus third full-length studio album "Vol.Beat" from 1997). Throughout Dominus career they continuously changed their sound, starting as a fairly brutal anti-Christian/satanic themed death metal act, then evolved to a more groove laden death´n´roll act, to what they ended up with on "Godfallos"...
...which is a thrash metal oriented groove metal style with hard rock and death metal elements. Sounds a bit confusing eh? Well it makes more sense when you listen to it, but it doesn´t erase the impression that Dominus were never a stylistic consistent act, and that their music suffered from it. It´s fair enough that artists want to experiment and try different approaches when they´ve settled on a core sound that their fans recognize and which sets them apart from other artists, but experimenting this much over the course of your first four albums, just makes your audience confused and in some cases probably frustrated.
As mentioned above describing the overall sound of "Godfallos" is slightly difficult, but take a healthy dose of late 80s Metallica (yeah Poulsen really has that Hetfield phrasing down), and mix in a lot of groove, and the occassional death´n´roll influence and growling vocal part, and you´re half way there. It´s actually not bad at all, and there are several crushingly heavy riffs and rhythms featured on the album. Some tracks are more memorable than others, but the general quality of the songwriting is pretty high.
There have been two lineup changes since "Vol.Beat (1997)" as bassist Anders Nielsen has been replaced by Franz Hellboss, and drummer Lars Hald has been replaced by Brian Andersen. The lineup changes don´t affect the quality of the music much, as Dominus are as well playing as ever. "Godfallos" features a decent and relatively powerful sound production. The guitar tone could have been a bit more powerful, but other than that the production works alright with the material. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.