Lamb of God releases their fifth album today and Wrath is the successor to the hugely successful Sacrament. I thought that last album was alright and had a couple of genuinely kick ass songs so I approached this new album with a fair amount of anticipation.

Wrath starts off with a typical slow melodic instrumental intro before the first proper song In Your Words kicks off with an opening riff that is reminiscent of the first song on the new Kreator. Not the same riff at all but just reminded me of it. Then as I was sitting through the opening song I realized something. There were no metal core breakdowns happening and the song was melodic and even had a slowed down part without sounding like the band had gone to Gothenburg. In fact the feel of this album is decidedly old school. The production is warm and not the plastic over produced sound that the band has been peddling, the drums seem trigger free and even when the inevitable breakdowns happen they are not as mired in cliché as they used to be. Pantera still seems to be the main influence though and Blythe still sounds a lot like Anselmo but coming from me, that’s not really a complaint.

Most of the songs on this album sound like an extension of Walk with Me in Hell and Redneck from the last album but with a much more old school feel. Contractor’s thrash reminds me of Exhorder but the slowed down part is all Pantera and Anselmo, Fake Messiah also has some good thrash vibes and is a pretty good song while Dead Seeds is some more Pantera worship.The best song on the album is the opener In Your Words with its thrash groove going head to head with a slowed down melodic section.

While this is definitely the best album by the band that I’ve heard there still isn’t a lot to recommend here. Sure, the songs are alright but the band is very heavily indebted to Pantera and like with Sacrament these songs are not going to hold up too well. I got this feeling that I’d heard all of these songs before and halfway through the album it just becomes background music except for when I went, “hey, this sounds like Pantera, that sounds like Exhorder and was that an Exodus part there?”

The album starts off well but ultimately promises a lot more than it ends up delivering. I’m sure the fanboys will love this and they should because this is the band’s best album yet. Unfortunately, that’s still not saying a lot.

Label - Epic
Year of Release - 2009