Volbeat - Seal The Deal & Let's Boogie album review

Let's start this review on a positive footing shall we? There are some awesome tracks on Seal The Deal & Let's Boogie, some properly infectious, groovy Metal. Unfortunately, for as many fist pumping songs as there are on this disc there are the same amount of wilted, below par offerings.

The problem is clear with Volbeat's sixth studio album; it suffers from a soggy middle. The top is adorned with lusciously sweet, creamy icing, the bottom is moist, but the middle is gooey and inedible.

Buying a new release off what you hear from radio plays of a band's singles is risky, but that's the joy of listening to an entire album; the not-knowing what you're going to set your ears on next. This does, however, leave the listener open to be desperately unsatisfied when what they're listening to doesn't live up to the expectations the singles offered.

This is exactly how I felt listening to STD&LB. Track one, The Devil's Bleeding Crown (one of said singles) opens the album with a bang - a fast, heavy bang - and really whets the appetite for what's to come. Through tracks two to four I have no complains; solid Hard Rock with the beautifully written - and performed partly in Volbeat's native Danish - For Evigt the standout of the first half.

Now, rather depressingly, the quality takes a bit of a nose dive. It's not even particularly clear to me what goes so wrong, but somehow Volbeat end up sounding something akin to Nickelback and it's not pleasant. For my own sanity - and also because I have no desire to describe the flaccidity of the middle four tracks - I'm going to move onto the last, and in my humble opinion, best third of the album.

Goodbye Forever, despite sounding rather apocalyptic, is up tempo and has a little power ballad flavour to it. Volbeat employ a backing choir for the last third of the track and it really adds weight to the deep meaning of the song - a very pleasant, divergent track to anything else on here.

The title track is up next. It's punchy, bolshie, fast and add to that any other synonym you can think of to describe Heavy Metal. It's got a feel similar to that of Metallica and even the guitar sound is "Wah-ed" to rival Kirk Hammett's majestic axe work. It's just a beast, pure and simple.

In Volbeat's Wiki entry, it describes their repertoire as: "Heavy Metal, Hard Rock and Psychobilly", the third of which I was highly confused by. My confusion was thusly ended however when I heard Battleship Chains, a cover of Terry Anderson's song made famous by The Georgia Satellites in 1986. It's got almost every sub-genre of rock infused into it; rhythm and blues, country and punk to name just three! It may not be a diamond on STD&LB, but it's shiny nonetheless.

Overall, STD&LB delivers fun Hard Rock. It's a huge shame the middle of the album doesn't deliver the same intensity, but in no way does it detract from the iconic Volbeat sound.

Rating - 7/10