Kadavar – Rough Times
Release Date: September 29, 2017
Label: Nuclear Blast
Have you ever put on an album expecting to hear something or at least hope to hear something and then all of the sudden, it’s just not there? Well, that is exactly what happened to me when I put on the latest album by Kadavar, Rough Times. You may be asking me, “Brainfart, what is it you were expecting to hear?” Well, honestly, I don’t know but it wasn’t this.
The opening two tracks, “Rough Times” and “Into the Wormhole” have Kadavar dipping into a way more sludgey, doomy spectrum of music which honestly did nothing for me. As a matter of fact, ½ way through “Into the Wormhole” I was bored and found myself doing other shit; straightening my desk, checking Facebook, getting another cup of coffee, etc. “Skeleton Blues” definitely woke me up as this is what I think of when I think of Kadavar. That swing, that groove, the melodic dynamics; THIS is what I was expecting to hear more of.
“Die Baby Die” seemed to be almost there but honestly, lead vocalist/guitarist Lupus sounded just as bored as I did listening to this one. This song seemed to be really trying to go somewhere but for some odd reason never really achieved liftoff. “Words of Evil” pulled from Kadavar’s punk influences and sounded more like something that would be on their debut album but it was “The Lost Child” that was without a doubt the showstopper. As a matter of fact, I think that THIS is more of what I was expecting from this album more so than the kind of doomy, sludgy, punky kind of direction that this album leaned heavier on.
Rough Times is definitely not the album that I was expecting from Kadavar and honestly, this can be seen as both a good and a bad thing: Good being that Rough Times is an album that caught me off guard and delivered the unexpected. Bad being that Rough Times just didn’t seem to hit me and make me feel like their previous masterpiece, Berlin. Berlin was such an emotional album full of depth and feeling and Rough Times just seems to lack that sincere kind of emotion. Maybe it’s there but if it is, I’m not getting it like I did with Berlin.
Maybe Rough Times is just one of those albums that takes a few spins to sink in. Maybe it’s just that Rough Times isn’t an album for me. It doesn’t make me any less a fan of Kadavar but it just reminds me that even your favorite bands can’t always be perfect and do things the way you’d like them to.
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