Album Review: Atreyu - 'Congregation of the Damned'

It’s hard to shake a shitty mindset when you’re about to listen to the new Atreyu release knowing a number of facts surrounding the band. First and foremost, they are astoundingly rubbish live and the reality is the last few releases have been completely pants. Hailed as a return to form by the bands fans who don’t actually realize you have to actually be IN form first to make a return. While sounding like I wrote this while trying to devour a particularly spiteful lemon Congregation does mark improvement on the abysmal Lead Sails Paper Anchor.

The overall sound quality of the CD is pretty huge and one of the few positive points to make, with super heavy weight producer Bob Marlette (Ozzy Osbourne) taking the band under his wing to produce. Clearly taking advantage of a bloke with a vast wealth of knowledge, Atreyu seemingly incorporated every studio effect at the start of each track, ranging from stadium chants to wailing violins.

Most of the tracks are basically frill free and reek of complete and utter predictability at almost every corner. The album titled track has some nice vocal harmonies but is spoiled by a riff that sounds like it came off an Avenged Sevenfold b-side album. Coffin Nails, despite the ridiculous track title is a little beauty. The chorus is huge, and the guitars truly sing making you feel like a dirty bastard while you bob your head along.

There are a few points in each song that make you think, hey this might actually not suck so much as I thought but are quickly extinguished by a quick drum build up followed by a big farty long clean chorus. If the clean bits were clipped back a bit, and the growls actually showed some evolution over the past decade this might actually be ok.

If you’re not looking for anything to exciting, are under the age of 15 or walk around the house in your mothers thrashed knickers you might like it, but for the rest of the musical community I would stick to singing bleeding massacre when nobody is around.

Not keen…

01. Stop! Before It's Too Late and We've Destroyed it All

02. Bleeding is a Luxury

03. Carried Away

04. Coffin Nails

05. Black Days Begin

06. Gallows

07. Storm to Pass

08. You Were King Now You're Unconscious

09. Insatiable

10. So Wrong

11. Ravenous

12. Lonely

13. Wait For You