Loyalty Above All (Honour Valour Pride - Bolt Thrower)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Honour Valour Pride - Bolt Thrower
Date:	01/04/08 (14 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Improvement over 'Mercenary.'

Disadvantages: Still suffers from the same problems.

'Honour Valour Pride' is another difficult album from Bolt Thrower, facing inevitable disdain by long-time fans for being the only album not to feature vocalist Karl Willetts, here replaced by a lacklustre performance from Benediction's Dave Ingram. But the vocals aren't the only problem, if indeed you consider them a problem at all - what's more of a pressing issue is the sheer monotony of the material.

Bolt Thrower long ago carved a niche for themselves as the British death metal band that shouts about war and plays fairly slowly, and by this point in their career, the gimmick was really starting to wear thin, even extending to the band's first use of desperate sound effect samples in the first song where previously the music itself was enough to convey the sense of combat and annihilation. Like the even more disappointing 'Mercenary,' this album feels less like being engulfed in a space-age battle and more like watching a tedious game of 'Warhammer 40,000' being played through the window of Games Workshop.

The guitars are so tedious here, that for the first time I found myself seriously annoyed at the resurgence of a repeating riff, just when I thought 'Honour' had finally ended. There are some good songs on offer here, 'Suspect Hostile' being notable as the only fast Bolt Thrower song in a long time (not that it makes it any more enthralling), but it's less of an album to listen to for excitement, and more suited as death metal background music, if you feel you could stomach such a thing.

1. Contact Wait Out
2. Inside the Wire
3. Honour
4. Suspect Hostile
5. 7th Offensive
6. Valour
7. K-Machine
8. A Hollow Truce
9. Pride

Summary: Bolt Thrower's seventh album (2001).