It’s been a while since Vader has graced these pages – I can’t
explain why that’s so, especially after their
Live In Japan disc got a decent review from me.
However, I think I might have done the band a disservice by
labelling them as a “death metal” band 18 months ago. Their release
from earlier this year,
Litany, has all the makings of a death metal album, to be
sure – but Peter Wiwczarek and crew seem to take a different
approach when it comes to the lyrical content, and allow the
listener to decide just what the lyrics mean to them.
It’s an interesting concept – and if the music didn’t tend to
blend together into one metallic lump, it would be far more
successful.
I don’t want to sound like I’m ripping the band right off the
bat. In fact, there are many things that Vader does that break the
mold of traditional death metal, and I like that they’re taking
those chances. Wiwczarek chooses to have his vocals heard more
clearly than many of his genre brethren; while they still
occasionally fall to the rear of the mix, you don’t have to always
sit there with the lyrics to decipher what he’s saying. Likewise,
the band could have taken their speed and thrown the switch wide
open. Instead, while there are elements of speed metal on
Litany, the focus is more on the instrumentation, and
figuring out how to get the most from the performance, not from the
metronome.
As for lyrical content, I stop short of suggesting that Vader
has a Christian bend to them, for the simple fact that there is
still a lot of questioning about God present in the lyrics
(“Wings,” “The One Made Of Dreams”). Yet, more often than not,
there are suggestions that there just might be a God, and if you
want to believe in him, that’s absolutely fine. Wiwczarek basically
invites people to take their own meanings away from his songs in
the liner notes to “Litany”.
All of this would work fantastically well – that is, if the 11
tracks on
Litany were a tad stronger. It’s not that they’re bad;
rather, it’s just that they quickly tend to dissolve into so much
background music that the overall power these tracks could have had
is diluted. Granted, at 30 minutes, it’s a short enough album to
invest some time into; maybe then is when the force of these words
is brought to the forefront.
Litany is not a bad album at all. Ambitious, yes, but not
bad – and if Wiwczarek and crew could figure a way to translate
that into the music to keep the listener enthralled, then Vader
could quickly become a powerhouse among metal bands.
