It’s that time of week again, the last day of the weekend where we sit and roast what we think are some of the worst metal albums of all time. This week in the oven, Sonic Syndicate as we roast their 2010 effort ‘We Rule The Night‘.
As stated when we reviewed Sonic Syndicate’s recent self-titled release we believe that Sonic Syndicate have struggled to find the sound they want and the direction they want to take since signing to Nuclear Blast in 2006. The album ‘We Rule The Night‘ totally epitomises the mess of direction that the band got themselves into.
The band has evolved from a Gothenburg metal outfit with a mission to what attempted to be an American alternative hit band, and at this point a series of events occured before the recordings of the ‘We Rule The Night‘. Singer Roland Johannsson threw in the towel basically stating ‘I have had enough of this crap’ following criticism of album ‘Love and Other Disasters‘ and left the band. Without one of the original songwriters to follow the band’s original Gothenburg style, the band was now free to write with a new direction, and the addition of alternative singer Nathan J. Biggs probably put a new dimension of mess on the songwriting process.
The band chose the direction of following an American alternative style, allowing the music to pull in endorsements from energy drinks and clothing lines (which it did) but sacrificing all musical integrity of the band. This is something record label Nuclear Blast are not known for allowing, but perhaps it was their little experiment. What ever the case, what came out of ‘We Rule The Night‘ was absolutely terrible.
Simplistic riffs that attempted to get a listener pumped, awful song titles that attempted to relate to the troubled American teen and following that were just terrible lyrics. The singles of ‘Burn This City‘, ‘Turn It Up‘ and ‘Revolution, Baby‘ were also accompanied by some seriously awful videos, directed by acclaimed metal video director Patric Ullaeus. It seemed like this was all just to spill out his perversions, featuring hopping motorbikes, strip clubs, tits and an unhealthy dose of no sense whatsoever.
Every song sounds the same as if they found their formula and agreed that album diversity was useless. The whole album was like being chased through a burned out park by a slow cyclops while chewing on a roll of toilet paper. Nothing to this album, simply terrible. There was very little positive response to this album, and the negative criticsm of the band’s direction forced out second singer and guitarist Roger and Richard Sjunnesson themselves citing that what they had produced was just awful.
It took a hiatus and another 4 years for the band to reconvene with a smaller line-up, and although they have improved there is still no clear direction, and still have to look back to this disease that was ‘We Rule The Night‘.
