As your leaking snot turns into icicles, the superficial frostbite affecting your extremities deepens, turning your hands and feet black. Your teeth involuntarily chatter so violently hard that fragments from your incisors are hacked away. Your erect body hairs become blanketed with a film of sleet that immediately freezes and encases your immobile body in a new cryogenic skin of ice. Just like a bone-chilling gust of polar winter wind, a new Frozen Soul album is upon us. The band’s previous full-length outing arrived by way of 2023’s ‘Glacial Domination’. The album saw Frozen Soul rise amongst the ranks of the new wave of traditional Death Metal to become one of the most well-known acts in the contemporary world of the genre. The band has found a particular distinction amongst their peer acts due their clever, goosebump-inducing frozen sound, and a new album from this glacial quintet has been hotly, or frost-ily anticipated for a while now.
Now, the most immediately attention-grabbing facet of this new album has to be the feature list. The likes of contemporary absurdist-brutalists Sanguisugabogg make an appearance, as well as the considerably more mainstream groove-metal act Machine Head. The album was preceded by various singles, one of which, the song ‘No Place of Warmth’ attracted considerable controversy amongst Death Metal’s endless number of gatekeeping purists for the inclusion of a feature by Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame. This track serves as the album’s opener, lead vocalist Chad Green’s timbre sounds more powerful and malevolently icy than on the previous Frozen Soul record. The song is a punchy, mid-paced rager that holds its own for the most part. As a passionate lover of genre fusion, or artists from differing stylistic ilks collaborating, I am prepared to give Gerad Way’s contribution to the track an open-minded analysis. Appearing later in the track, the famed emo rock vocalist delivers a few short lines in a higher-register growl towards the end of the song. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the man’s dirty vocals, however I don’t really understand the added benefit his part is intended to bring to the track. From a purely musical perspective his feature, in addition to the highly basic guitar section it takes place over, is completely forgettable.
‘Invoke War’ comes next and this is the track that features Machine Head. Instrumentally the song is a linearly composed march that feels heavy, chug-centered, and direct. Green’s vocal sound adds a layer of excitement, but I must say that the volume of the drums on this track in a few places frequently causes the clarity of the guitars to become slightly lost in the mix. The one-minute track ‘Absolute Zero’, offers a change of pace, but also indulges in some of the worst stylistic attributes commonly associated with over-produced modern Slam bands. The track ‘Dreadnought’ featuring Sanguisugabogg continues the album’s underwhelming slog with more generic amateur-quality Slam riffing, and I fail to grasp what the featured artist on this song is even supposed to be adding.
‘Eyes of Despair’ takes the band’s sound in a more thrashy direction. I appreciate Matt Dennard’s thumping drum performance on the track, but it isn’t enough to redeem the uninspiring guitar parts and edgy Slam indulgence that closes the song out. It isn’t until seven songs in on ‘Ethereal Dreams’ that the band finally delivers a piece of more reasonable quality. I appreciate the song’s atmospheric elements, followed by the melodic interplay of the guitars, the rolling tumult of the drums, and Green’s great vocal performance with his seething lyrics. ‘DEATHWEAVER’ starts out with more half-baked meandering guitar chugs, but the band seems to awaken somewhat in the track’s livelier second half. The catchy meditations on ‘Frost Forged’ make it one of the better songs amongst the tracklist, and the band goes out on a better note with the closing track ‘Killin Time (Until it’s Time to Kill)’. This finale track features the most exciting, catchy and energetic moments on the whole album. It’s like Frozen Soul saved the best for last, it’s a shame then that the bar for being the best on this record is set so low.
I’ve admired Frozen Soul’s approach to modern traditional Death Metal quite a bit in recent years, they’ve been a unique and stand-out act within the contemporary genre. That’s why it’s so disappointing to me that this album falls far below the excitement I expect from this band. The album is caked in boring and aimless guitar playing, a linear, tiresome use of tempo, not to mention that the star-studded feature list is barely utilised and adds virtually nothing to the album’s merits… of which there are few. I can only imagine the band or their record label decided that having these big names on the album’s credits would be good for purely marketing reasons. When compared to the band’s prior output, ‘No Place of Warmth’ is a big, underwhelming regression. Maybe it’s time to turn the heating up and thaw this band out of their glacial boredom.
