Maze Of Torment - Hidden Cruelty
Swedish death-thrash metal. It's not a very inspiring phrase. It brings to mind images of good, solid song writing and a certain level of workmanship to the album, but never anything particularly exciting. With Sweden's Maze of Torment and their new album 'Hidden Cruelty' they more than fulfil this prophecy. Whilst the album certainly isn't bad, it definitely isn't inspiring either.
Maze of Torment are a band of two halves, songs such as 'The Icons Burden' display a clear old-school Thrash bias whilst 'Hidden Cruelty' shows more death-like tendencies. Yes ladies and gentleman, Maze of Torment are one of the more curious beasts on display in the metal scene... they are a thrash-death band. Now, I may be alone in this, but I've always had mixed feelings on thrash-death styled metal (more so than any other mixed genre). On paper it is a good proposition, in practice it's all rather humdrum and usually fails to fulfil the promise of both genres, and this is exactly what has happened on 'Hidden Cruelty'
A good way of summing up this album's ethos is "old school", from the overall strong structure, to the typical chord progression and through to the thoroughly classically styled guitar solos this is an album that harks back to all of the bands which have come before Maze Of Torment. Now whether this is a good thing is really down to the individual, whilst on some tracks the stylistic clichés are enjoyable at times the whole album can become rather predictable after a bit. The guitar solos for example, whilst proficient and definitely reasonably enjoyable in and of themselves, are so omnipresent and are so easily anticipated in unadventurous song writing that it becomes a bit tiresome after awhile. All of these clichés and stylistic flairs are all the more humdrum at times when it's taken into account how little variety there is between songs.
Overall this is a mixed bag of an album. If you're a big thrash fan, then you'll enjoy it as it definitely leans more to the thrash side of the genre. If you're a death fan, don't get your hopes up. There are many more inventive, memorable and talented bands than Maze of Torment, but nonetheless Maze of Torment do what they do, and they do it well.