In the tribal world of metal music, the Danish rockers of Volbeat have carved out a niche by refusing to conform to any of the metal subgenres. Their idiosyncratic sound draws from rockabilly and other retro rock & roll styles as much as it does from thrash and groove metal. God of Angels Trust, Volbeat’s ninth studio album, continues to mine that eclectic sonic terrain, pairing hard-hitting riffs with infectious melodies.
The songs were cobbled together by combining different parts without regard for standard song structures and were quickly recorded live over a five-week studio session. As a result, the songs on God of Angels Trust have frequent shifts in speed, meter, and tone, much like Volbeat’s early work.
The album opener, “Devils Are Awake,” begins with a slow, sludgy attack, shifts into a frenzied groove, transitions into a melodic pop-rock chorus, and concludes with a heavy, plodding outro. Like much of God of Angels Trust, the song contrasts good and evil, faith and hypocrisy. “Hold your tongue, you evil one; don’t speak that loud,” Michael Poulsen sings. “You’ll pay with blood and swear by the book but live in sin.” By juxtaposing dark, menacing riffs in the verses with breezy choruses, Volbeat contrasts the light and the darkness in the lyrics. “We learn our kids to fall asleep, have them believe the world is in peace, but outside, devils are awake.”
Poulsen’s voice has a rock swagger with a balladier’s croon and sounds like latter-day James Hetfield crossed with Elvis Presley. His guitar riffs are more about rhythms than crafting memorable hooks. Drummer Jon Larsen and bassist Kaspar Boye Larsen lay down punishing rhythms at times, but lighten up often enough for the heavier moments to have greater impact.
The album’s biggest earwigs are “At the End of the Sirens,” which abruptly shifts tempos every few lines, and the mid-tempo rocker “By A Monster’s Hand,” which pairs Poulsen’s jerky, staccato riffs with session guitarist Flemming C. Lund’s soaring lead licks. It’s heavy on hooks and heavier on macabre imagery about a murderer. “In the night he’s dancing with the dead, wearing the body parts on a string,” Poulsen croons. His voice sounds like a love song, even when describing “moving his cellar trophies to another home.”
Volbeat’s greatest strength is melding its disparate influences, like the jarring transitions in “Demonic Depression” from pulverizing verses to melodic, sing-along choruses. In the rockabilly/metal fusion “In the Barn of the Goat Giving Birth to Satan’s Spawn in a Dying World of Doom,” Poulsen dials up his Elvis-like swagger for a twangy-but-heavy romp. There’s a dissonance between Poulsen’s campy vocal drawl and the apocalyptic imagery. “I saw the light of time, the sun was burning fields. And when the angel’s fall, banished from the sky,” Poulsen sings over heavy riffs soaked in western twang. “Baby, see the black moon rise above a blood-red sky that feats the calling of the horned one.”
It’s creepy stuff. Throughout God of Angels Trust, Volbeat matches horror-movie imagery with eclectic music that alternates between bruising metal and a variety of retro-rock styles. The dissonance in styles and tones is unnerving in the best way, resulting in a multifaceted experience that challenges metal preconceptions while remaining easy to digest.
