UMUR
"Hell's Unleashed" is the 6th full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Unleashed. The album was released through Century Media Records in April 2002. It´s the successor to "Warrior" from 1997. After touring in support of "Warrior (1997)", the band felt a need for a break and went on a hiatus which ended up lasting 5 years, where they concentrated on other projects. They made a comeback in 2002 with reissues of their early albums and with "Hell's Unleashed".
Stylistically the material on "Hell's Unleashed" is a bit of a melting pot of all the elements from their previous releases. There are both old school death metal elements and viking mythology here, but also more contemporary lyrical subjects and groove metal and death´n´roll elements. Not completely unlike the musical style on the last couple of albums by the band. Thankfully "Hell's Unleashed" features a stronger and more powerful sounding production job than the last couple of albums, and that helps the material shine a bit more.
The 14 tracks on the 43:45 minutes long album are predominantly simple vers/chorus structured songs which are between 2-4 minutes long, so compositionally there are very few surprises, although the band do try a few new compositional ideas. "Hell's Unleashed" is both well performed and as mentioned above well produced, so upon conclusion it´s a good quality release by Unleashed. It´s not their best, nor is it a perfect release (some of the lyrics are for example badly written and honestly a bit cringe worthy), but it´s a solid release and a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.