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Deadlock: Manifesto

19/11/08 || Lord K Philipson

The first thing I did was to look at the track listing for this album, kindly sent to us from their label. One thing caught my drunken eye immediately; Deadlock’s covering the muthafucken “Temple of love” tune by the fucken cockjockey’s of fucken Sisters Of fucken Mercy. But why? Fuck Sisters Of Mercy though I’ll admit Deadlock’s version is fine no matter if it’s quite a shitty song to begin with. They did what they could with it and I rather listen to this than the original ass-tune. No love for Sisters Of Mercy from me, huh? Not a shit. And I hate metal bands covering fucken Sisters Of Mercy out of all fucken bands in this goddamned world that they could cover and actually surprise someone while doing it. C’mon Deadlock, with all the imagination and fresh ideas you guys show in your material, Sisters Of Mercy is the best you could come up with? What the fuck.

Now when the bashing of the Sisters is over (perhaps), let’s concentrate on “Manifesto”, Deadlock’s latest recording following the “Wolves” album that I like quite a bit. After going thru this piece quite a few times the first thing (apart from the babbling in the intro) that dawned on me is the fact that “Manifesto” is hardly as catchy as “Wolves” was with the first listen. I hardly expected them to top the fantastic choruses of tunes such as “Code of honor” or my fave “We all shall bleed”, and they haven’t (though “Agony Applause” comes close in catchiness).

They did throw in some awesome techno bits and pieces on “Wolves”, much to my approval, and here we get surprised with some hip-hop sections (listen to “Deathrace” and tell me you saw that coming, hahaha) among other things. I applaud Deadlock for that, those influences in their metal feel really fresh, and I definitely enjoy things like that in my music, you know (was that sentence long enough for ya, bitch?). But those ingredients can’t make a whole album especially awesome if the rest of the actual material isn’t on par with the ideas of doing such things, you know. And that is the problem. The songs aren’t catchy enough this time around. There are glimpses at some fine, fine work here and there, but as a whole it’s a bit of a let-down. “Manifesto” is unfortunately missing those really, really strong tunes.

Deadlock’s strongest card is still the vocals of Sabine Weniger. I love that chick’s voice (one of my 3 fave female voices in metal, easily. The other 2 being Chris Barnes and… well… Chris Barnes) and I believe that Deadlock would be an even better band with just her doing the singing. It’s not like growler/screamer (and sometimes singer, I guess) Johannes Prem is Jörgen Sandström or anything, so basically he’s just bringing down the material that Sabine builds up with her set of extra-ordinary lungs (and I’m not talking about her boobs, fucko), accompanied by some absolutely fine riffing here and there, though the vocals are most of the time better than the actual material. I think it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be as much a fan of Deadlock if Sabine wasn’t in the band.

We get top-notch musicianship and a great production to boot, but the songs themselves aren’t as fucken excellent as I would want them to be. And that’s the main problem with this album. As I said, it might grow on me given time, but I think I’ll go back to “Wolves” when I want my Deadlock fix. Make no mistake though; “Manifesto” is a fine album by all means – it’s just not, like I mentioned, as great as I really wanted it to be.

“Altruism” is a beautiful tune by the way, at least the first half. Auto-Tuned to hell sometimes, sure, but still a fucken beautiful track. It should have ended the album instead of that fucken Sisters Of Mercy cover. For fuck’s sake. Talking about covers, the one for the album (the actual cover that is. You know – the picture) looks like a fucken turd, painted by a 5 year old. Deadlock should aim higher than that.

7 fans out of 10 expected more.

Information
Released: 2008
Label: Lifeforce Records
Website: www.xdeadlockx.com
Band
Johannes Prem: vocals
Sabine Weniger: vocals
Sebastian Reichl: guitars
Gert Rymen: guitars
Thomas Huschka: bass
Tobias Graf: drums

Tracklist
01. The Moribund Choir vs. The Trumpets Of Armageddon
02. Martyr To Science
03. Slaughter’s Palace
04. The Brave / Agony Applause
05. Deathrace
06. Fire At Will
07. Seal Slayer
08. Manifesto
09. Dying Breed
10. Altruism
11. Temple Of Love

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