Alright! Imma start by saying that there’s something fishy going on. I write reviews for a few different sites and, recently, I’ve been sent a lot of albums by bands with weird-arse names. Brotthogg is the latest. To me, Brotthogg sounds like a chain of pig-themed restaurants. After a quick Google search, Brotthog is an old Norwegian word meaning ”The one who has to take care of the job, the unpleasant one”. I prefer my pig-themed restaurant chain.
The name Brotthogg is not the only oddity here. The composition of the band is weird too. In short, there’s two vocalists and one musician who takes care of everything except the vocals. Poor bastard! Encyclopedia Metallum tells me that Brotthogg play Progressive/Melodic Death Metal. I’d categorise what Brotthogg do as Blackened Trash, but who am I to argue with EM. The first song “The Summoning” is really solid Blackened Thrash. It’s more Megadeth Thrash than Destroyer 666 Thrash. I guess this could be considered Melodic DM in that it’s similar in style to Arch Enemy and Children of Bodom. You know, chug on the E-string and throw in some notes and runs here and there. The music in “Broken Chains” really reminded me of the aforementioned..
Although it’s clear that he’s a very good musician, the song structures are pretty formulaic. As such, it can, at times, get a little predictable. In my humble opinion, a contributing factor here is the length of the songs. A good chunk of them are well over five minutes long. I’d suggest taking a scythe to them and getting them down to about four minutes long. Also, and like Arch Enemy, most of the lyrics are pretty bad. That said, the bulk of the riffs are really, really good and this is, overall a good Blackened Thrash Melodic Death Metal album.
Rating – 4/5
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The Metal Wanderlust 