SOILWORK — Stabbing the Drama (review)

SOILWORK — Stabbing the Drama album cover

Album · 2005 · Melodic Death Metal

2.5/5 · 2011-09-17
Diogenes

Soilwork’s sixth album is what you might call “safe metal”. It’s super easy to get into, it doesn’t have anything that’s really out there in terms of instrumental work, and the production is nice and clean. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, mind you, but there’s not a whole lot right with it, either…and that’s not even taking into account what kind of stuff this band used to play. Stabbing the Drama is great for people new to the wonderful world of metal, but it leaves much to be desired among those who look for things that are even vaguely challenging or memorable.

Easily the best aspect of Stabbing the Drama is the vocal performance of Bjorn “Speed” Strid. He pretty much carries the rest of the band on his vocal chords, giving his best effort of any Soilwork output and making this album what it is. His knack for easily transitioning between shouting in the verses to singing gracefully in the choruses is quite distinguishable, as Soilwork have been doing this for a while, and it’s never been more upfront than it is here. Although the deeper death grunts are absent, they wouldn’t have fit with what the band was trying to do, and his cleans more than make up for any remaining deficiencies in his harsh vocals.

After Strid’s vocals, though, Stabbing the Drama is the epitome of average. Almost every song follows the same basic structure, taking zero adventures with very little in the way of technicality. This is a shame, since Soilwork have shown their competence as musicians plenty of times in the past. What makes this even worse is that although Strid’s vocals are great, it’s almost as if he’s the only one improving, while the rest of the band gets lazier and lazier. Just listen to the riffs: they’re about as simple and watered-down as you can get for a metal band, full of groove and chugging. Hell, you could replace the guitars with synths and get basically the same result, which is something that’s just there to back up Strid singing. For the entire album, I was waiting for the guitars to do something interesting, but they never did! Booooring!

In spite of all of this, the music isn’t half bad, which makes this album even more of a frustrating listen. I begrudgingly admit that lots of the choruses (Nerve, the title track, Distance, and Observation Slave) made me rewind and listen to them a few more times, and the catchiness factor as a whole keeps this album just above the surface. The playing is far from sloppy (although for stuff this simple, it’s hard not to be tight), and the production is good, as usual. Still, none of this is prominent enough to redeem lackadaisical songwriting; if anything, the album’s strengths make the simplistic writing even more noticeable, serving as a reminder that Soilwork do in fact know what they’re doing.

Had this album been recorded by some other band as a debut, I might have been okay with it. But it’s almost impossible to not think where Soilwork used to be while listening to this…this…POP metal. It’s only classified as melodic death because that’s what Soilwork used to play (and because melodic groove metal isn’t really a subgenre at the moment). It’s devoid of any aggression, attitude, or “coolness” factor that used to define this band, and that’s what ultimately makes Stabbing the Drama a “pass”. Granted, it’s not as much of a bore as Figure Number Five, but that’s because they had already stooped to that level anyway. Stabbing the Drama is the unfortunate metamorphosis of a band that was once promising and influential into one that simply falls into a niche with the rest of the sheep.