Mercenary - Metamorphosis (2011)

Throughout their career, Danish Mercenary have been attempting to perfect a certain harmony between Melodic Death Metal, Gothenburg Style Metal, and Modern Heavy Metal. Additionally, with the emergence of their new (sixth) album, Metamorphosis, under their new label NoiseArt Records, the band kept motivation to do what they know best even after key members of the band, such as their prime melodic vocalist, Mikkel Sandager, keyboardist, Morten Sandager, and drummer, Mike Park Nielsen, left. As the phoenix rises from the desert sands, so did Mercenary as a foursome with new members. For the vocal role they found a hidden talent in their bass player, Rene Pedersen, and for the drumming they found Morten Løwe Sørensen. Metamorphosis shows the continuance of the Mercenary way and business is good.

As far as their music goes, more or less it will be practically the same. The effort is in the vein of modernization. There is a wide selection of colorful Heavy Metal melodies knee deep in Death Metal, and the quality of their practice is profound, kind of like the Canadian diverse act of Into Eternity. Mercenary even displayed, on some of the tracks, a Helloween-ish perspective regarding melodies, which is also a great aspect. The solos presented by the band’s shredder, co-songwriter and the most veteran member of the group, Jakob Mølbjer, showed that he never lost his inventive touch. He is still dominant when making peak moments sound so intense. As for the melodies, both guitarists played out the harmonies wonderfully. The newfound clean vocal skills of the band’s hammering bass player, Rene Pedersen, made him an important factor on Metamorphosis. On some sections he performed in such way that is plain unforgettable. Even though he is still not in the same league as the band’s previous clean man, he is on his way there. Along with their musical creativity and talented musicians, Mercenary hired their local master producer, Jacob Hansen, to make their new release be as bombastic and chopping as it turned out to be. When it came down to their sound along with the mixing & mastering rate, these guys knew how to pick their producers. In this release, Hansen did, as he always does for his clients, a hell of a job, and everything is clicking with great synchronization.

Mercenary had everything in their arsenal to make Metamorphosis a bomb and they made the best of it. Almost the entire selection of tracks on this release is a major hit or with a full potential to be a hit. When there is a perfect harmony between extreme Metal and Modern Metal, yet classic-inspired, Metal, this is when Mercenary are a true powerhouse. These guys aren’t limiting themselves on Extreme Metal, and that intuition was derived particularly from the three explosive tracks “Shades Of Grey”, “Memoria” and “Velvet Lies”. The former displays Pedersen on his best vocal performance yet, a truly inspiring outcome. Right behind these tracks, as mentioned, everything is no less than highly rated.

Metamorphosis, as a comparable release against Mercenary’s previous releases, is an amazing “back to business” release. Everything here is all about personal issues and diverse incidents in one’s lifetime, both actual and cognitive. This is a top notch band and it will be hard for any diverse Metalhead to leave them be.