ARCH ENEMY
Khaos Legions (PULP Live Records)
Review by: Vernon Go
A NEW RELEASE THAT RANKS WITH HEAVY METAL’S GREATEST
I am absolutely honored and proud to have PULP release this awesome album in our country. Let me start by saying I rarely like anything this much. My wife Happee likens me to the grumpy old man in that Pixar movie called Up. So when I say rarely I am talking blood dripping off a steak rare.
The last time I felt this level of excitement listening to a new album to my immediate memory was when I first put on Slipknot’s Subliminal Verses, which is still one of my all time favorite metal albums, joining the ranks of Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind, Metallica’s Ride The Lightning, Pantera’s Vulgar Display of Power, Anthrax’s Among The Living and Slayer’s Reign in Blood in my heavy metal books.
How can I describe the level of excitement Khaos Legion elicits? it’s almost visceral, from the very first minutes of the album – you just know instinctively that this album will RULE! And it does. It is epic. It almost strikes me as a conceptual album, weaving musical themes like a symphony or perhaps more appropriately a heavy metal opera that pulls you or rather tears you apart in various directions with well-crafted musical movements. The lyrics, even evinced in the song titles, tell a story: “Bloodstained Cross,” “No Gods, No Master,” “City of the Dead,” “Cult Khaos” – ripping into your ears with glorious aplomb via the demon living in Angela Gassow’s gullet. The album essentially follows a consistent theme that seems to bark freedom from conformity – sundering of the sick normalcy that plagues society.
