UMUR
"Vol.Beat" is the 3rd full-length studio album by Danish metal act Dominus. The album was released through Progress Records in November 1997. It´s the successor to "The First 9" from 1996. "Vol.Beat" features one lineup change since the predecessor as Anders Nielsen has replaced Jesper Olsen on bass. Dominus started out playing some relatively brutal death metal in their demo years and continued to play a groove oriented type of death metal on their debut full-length studio album "View to the Dim (1994)". "The First 9" further expanded the groove element of the band´s sound an toned down the death metal parts, and "Vol.Beat" further continues down that road.
In fact there´s very little on "Vol.Beat" which can be labelled death metal. The album is often tagged death´n´roll, but personally I would rather call the music on the album rock´n´roll oriented groove metal. Michael Poulsen´s vocals are pretty raw, but they are not growling type vocals and the riffs and rhythms are not in the death metal camp either. This is catchy, groovy and rock´n´roll influenced music. It´s actually not far from sounding like Poulsen´s later band Volbeat (which is named after the title of this album) in a rawer and less polished version with rough vocals instead of clean ditto. The material on the 11 track, 42:27 minutes long album are generally well written and powerful, although not all tracks stand out equally much, there´s nothing sub par feautured on the album.
"Vol.Beat" is fairly well produced and well performed too, so upon conclusion it´s a good quality release by Dominus. It can be argued that the musical development of the band should have resulted in a name change, as this basically sounds like a completely different act from the band who released "View to the Dim (1994)", but their development and change of musical style aren´t terribly different from how an artist like Gorefest evolved through the 90s. So it wasn´t completely uncommon for death metal acts to change their style radically towards a more rock´n´roll or groove oriented style in those days. Dominus is just another example of that. Overall "Vol.Beat" isn´t exactly a revelation, but it´s a solid release featuring some infectously groovy riffs and rhythms and a 3.5 star (70%) rating isn´t all wrong.
