Sonic Syndicate - Confessions (2016)

When Sonic Syndicate burst out into the metal scene in the mid 00's, they quickly became the hottest thing since sliced bread. You could not listen 15 minutes to your regular rock radio station without hearing the band. After releasing three album in a rapid pace, the band had established themselves as a force to be reckon with (a very predictable force, but still). After that though, everything went wrong. "We Rule The Night" was a huge step in the wrong direction, and is still today considered as one of the worst albums from the 10's. The self titled and four year younger follow up gave the band some credit back, but they might have fucked up even greater now. How they did it? Beats me, but they did.

My stomach started to turn over "Confessions" almost instantly when I got my first glance of the cover art. Oh, sorry, I should have written "art". Not only is this a bland, half assed photoshop project, but there is nothing in it that says this was made by this band. I expect covers like these from pop artists, or your latest house DJ, but not a metal band. Even worse, the band logo (which I think is one of the cooler ones out there) is changed to one of the most generic fonts I have ever seen. They could have made it with Comic Sans instead, and it would have been an improvement. God, it is like they want everyone to not buy this record.

Thank god they did though, because the music is just as the album cover. I do not really know what it is, but it ain't metal. The band has completely abandoned ship, left their Gothenburg metal roots, and done a pop album instead. Yes, I am serious, dead serious. This is not a metal album. In fact, it is the complete opposite. It is just bland crap. I cannot see anything from the old band in this album. There is nothing heavy, close to no riffs, the harsh vocals are thrown out of the window, and so is every ounce of dignity the band still had.

As soon as the title track starts off the album, you get struck by a keyboard melody that is very reminiscent of some typical house song, a feeling that is only enhanced with the choir. 30 seconds in, and I want to turn it off already. Unfortunately for me, I have to torture myself through this and 11 more songs, and all of them are in the same style. Even if "We Rule The Night" was bad in itself, it at least had metal in it, a urge to expand their existing sound into something new, while still maintaining (some of) their past. This is nothing like that, this is just dumb. If it was a new project under a different name, it might have worked, but they did this because the brand was there. Nobody wins here.

But wait! I might have found a small grain of hope here, a track called "Still Believe", with a guest artist, someone named Madyx. Never heard of her, but I will give it a cha... aaaaaaand it is another pop song. Madyx sounds like a decent name, but this woman is closer to Taylor Swift (or P!nk judging by the photos I googled up) than Doro Pesch, which of course means that we got a romantic duet on our hands. GOD... DAMN... IT!!! This is even blander and more awful than the rest of the material (how that now is possible), and once again, I cannot believe that this is Sonic Syndicate we are talking about. This hurts sooooooo bad.

And the lyrics. The Lyrics. THE GOD DAMN LYRICS! What the hell is this? This is as unimaginative as possible, topics that are generic and boring, telling no interesting story what so ever. It is love, despair, a little more love, and some more love. It is so awful, not even fitting for pop music, which this basically is. You get tired of hearing it before you even get a chance. They truly went full pop, so that is... a thing.

But there must be something good about "Confessions", some little meaningless thing that is of redeeming quality, right? WRONG! There is nothing in this record that is worth your effort. The only thing I can think of is that the choruses are at least catchy, but they are still as disgusting as eating paste. I did my research to get an answer to why this sudden change happened, how something can go so wrong in just two years of time, but all I could find was that they changed bassist and that this was "a new beginning" for the band. If you could see me right now, you would probably see the deepest face palm the world has ever seen.

Sonic Syndicate is officially dead. The band that we all knew 10 years ago is completely gone and have turned into a band that should never be associated with metal ever again. It is like they have given up, said "Fuck it, let's hope the pop fans are dumb enough to love us". This album is so offensively bad, it truly makes me angry for all the wrong reasons. I have only given out one 0 rating ever in this blog, and that was to "Devlab", but there is a difference between these two zeros. "Devlab" did not sound like music, more like an ambient experiment, but this does sound like music, really crappy music.

My final confession is that this is hands down the worst album that you will hear this year. Actually, scratch that, make this album the worst album that you will NOT hear this year. You can thank me later.

Songs worthy of recognition: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH...

Rating: 0/10 Closures