The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
We are aware that APOCALYPTICA couldn’t remain in their wonderous primal state (think ‘Plays Metallica by Four Cellos’, ‘Inquisition Symphony’ and ‘Cult’) and their idea of moving forward and developing their unique sound is a good intention on its own.
However, the steps towards their own music Hell were made with ‘Reflections’ (maybe even earlier – with the versions of ‘Hope’ and ‘Path’) and the inclusion of drums and vocals, which saw the band moving from the unique into the ordinary and mundane.
Things got even worse with albums like ‘Worlds Collide’ and ‘7th Symphony’ but it is ‘Shadowmaker’ that makes it clear APOCALYPTICA have already reached the gates of Hell. And if things get even worse from now on, we shouldn’t even bother to listen to them, good intentions or not.
Their eight release is cliched and based on pop formulas, so it’s hard even to describe it as “cello metal”. “Teen rock” fits it much better. Ballad ‘Hole In My Soul’ could very well be an Avril Lavigne track, while the ending few minutes of ‘Shadowmaker’ as well as the whole ‘House of Chains’ are generic nu metal a-la Papa Roach. ‘Come Back Down’ feels like a leftover from a Maroon 5 recording session. And no, these are by no means compliments.
Singer Franky Perez delivers a neat performance (nothing more) but the banal songs and truly horrible lyrics prevent him from achieving anything truly good. Drums sound way too modern to be anything but plastic while the occasional electronic beat (listen to ‘Riot Lights’) is so out of place, it’s absolutely unnecessary.
It comes as little surprise that ‘Shadowmaker’‘s better monets are the instrumental tracks (especially ‘Reign of Fear’) and the tracks in which cello sounds like cello and not like a downtuned guitar on a Soulfly album. It’s easy to notice APOCALYPTICA are still able to compose good music (try ‘Till Death Do Us Part’) but ‘Shadowmaker’ offers mostly uninteresting and utterly annoying pop trash.