Soilwork, one of the front runners in melodic death metal, bring us their latest effort “Sworn to a Great Divide”. After a couple of weak albums with “Stabbing the Drama” and the mediocre “Figure Number Five” the band is starting to pull the strings in the right direction. Even thought their new album isn’t “The Chainheart Machine” Part II or even reminiscent of “A Predators Portrait”; it’s still a very strong and heavy album.

Things start with the title track, featuring good riffs and a great chorus that sounds better with Björn Strid’s great vocals that only seem to get better with time. The song is followed by the formulaic “Exile”; this song is the best example of what’s wrong with this album. Some of the songs have great riffs and great choruses that are catchy and are only complemented with excellent guitar solos and overall good musicianship. The problem is this isn’t a constant throughout the album, and so the band delivers great songs like “Breeding Thorns”, “Your Beloved Scapegoat”, “I, Vermin”, “The Pittsburg Syndrome” and the title track. But then, the rest of the album is pretty much full of generic songs and forgettable riffs that you won’t remember after you reach the end of the album. The band also commits the deadly sin of writing songs that catchy but not in the good way, instead they write songs with a sort of pop sensibility and therefore are nothing more than weak songs you’d expect out of terrible bands like Linkin Park or 3 Doors Down.

This isn’t by any means Soilwork’s best album, because it has as many flaws and forgettable moments as any other mainstream alternative metal album, but thankfully they are showing signs of life and can still write some hard hitting tunes. Hopefully this will be the path they choose in future releases.