I was in a good place and mood while at home, and had a captive audience of myself… There are a lot of Volbeat signatures in it. Poulsen said, “I wrote the whole album in three months. They took that unmistakable combination and went up a notch… or three. Volbeat, the Danish rockers consisting of Michael Poulsen (guitars/vocals), Jon Larsen (drums), Rob Caggiano (guitars) and Kaspar Boye Larsen (bass), deliver a mammoth 13 track powerhouse with their signature style – just add a tablespoon of Metallica and Thin Lizzy, a teaspoon of Social Distortion, The Misfits, and Anthrax, a sprinkling of Little Richard, and a bunch of pelvis shaking from The King of Rock and Roll. There is an overriding sense of camaraderie and joy emanating from the speakers at every point.What happens if you’re a musician in the midst of a global shutdown? In Volbeat’s case, they decided to harness all of the energy reserved for live performances and created a monster in the form of their eighth studio album, Servant of the Mind. Solitude and focus seems to have suited Poulson and crew, with the album written entirely in lockdown, and the joy of meeting back up and performing together perhaps further enhancing the recording process as this sounds like the band are having the times of their lives. While checking in at every point of the octogram of styles the band espouses (it is fair to say there isn’t anything stylistically that is particularly new for the band), Servant of the Mind is proof that every arm of the Vol-beast is as muscular as the rest.Īnd speaking of muscular, the heart of the album is chunky, punchy and pounding guitar chuggery – Rob Caggiano sounds like he’s having an absolute party with advance single ‘Shotgun Blues’ being a particularly evident moment of bottom string stomp, with the track also serving to highlight that Michael Poulson is in the finest of fettles – a smile in the voice, confidently striding atop the band’s stadium-filling sound. One of the Volbeat guarantees is that they will cover a lot of ground within the realms of their style and sound – from the surf rock romp of the breezy ‘Wait A Minute My Girl’ to the next track on the album, the doomy ‘Sacred Stones’, which could easily have sat on any post- Ozzy Sabbath album with pride, to ‘ Dagen Før’ from the Entombed (yep!) HM2 powered Death meets Groove Metal of ‘Becoming’ (that builds from hell to a hook to rival ‘Lola Montez’) to the quirky, catchy, Country-tinged duet with Stine Bramsen of Alphabeat – and they will do so with confidence and bluster in a way that means everything on display is defiantly and definitely Volbeat. Underpinning it all is a root Misfits -meets- Metallica -meets-Rockabilly core, and everything you want from a Volbeat album is here in spades, with every aspect – the psychobilly, the dirty Danzig moments, the Black album worship (‘Mindlock’), the arena rock choruses (‘Heaven’s Descent’ anyone!?), the big chugging stomps and the Dusk til Dawn satani-vampiric dance of ‘The Devil Rages On’ – all dialled up and all consistently delivering. Form is temporary when class is permanent. Particularly in the Volbeat camp, because, Servant of the Mind ( EMI ), their twentieth anniversary and eighth studio release, is their best to date. There’s a pervading feeling that age dilutes quality and / or heaviness, yet nothing could be further than the truth. A whole plethora of written-off bands pushing well into their second, third, even fourth, decade with career best releases prove it. The last ten years of evidence proves it. Our staff voted-for album of the year top 3 picks for this year to prove it. At what point do we (I? Is it just me by now…? in which case, I’ll get with the programme asap!) change our default position that bands twenty years deep into their careers shouldn’t be producing their best stuff in a heavy music arena? Cos it’s bollocks.
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