Fragments is the album Loudblast released in 1998
just before they decided to disband and it should have thus remained their latest
testimony. Fortunately for us, the band decided to join forces again and just
came up with a brand new album, Planet Pandemonium. In my review of
their latest album, I said Fragments was a little bit of a deception for me,
especially after the release of their mini-CD Cross The Threshold.
Fragments is not a bad album or an average album, it is definitely
an above average thrash death metal album, but I prefer Planet Pandemonium
and Sublime Dementia. Fragments was a return to a more thrash
metal rather than the death metal style on their two previous
releases. It contains some great songs such as Flesh, Into The
Keep, Labyrinth,Worthy Of Angel and I Against I
with some great riffs as usual, but the groovy elements that was XXX on their
previous mini-CD is not present on this album, and thus came my greatest disappointment
with that album. Whereas on some tracks the groovy side is slightly XXX proposed
like on Frozen Tears, they didn't reiterate it here as much as they
did with No Tears To Share or Cross The Threshold. Besides,
the album tends to become too monotonous as you get into the second half of it. Moreover, the guitar work on this album is a bit below average from their previous
albums, and Planet Pandemonium is definitely better and more guitar
oriented. Although the music remains very heavy, it is not as complex as it
was on their earlier material, but it is still a very solid work of melodic,
well played technical pieces of death metal with great musicianship. The album
was recorded at Impulse Studios and got mixed again by Colin Richardson which
makes the sound closer to Cross The Threshold, but this one sounds
different than its predecessor, with a more direct, more "in your face" kind of
production.
The album features a really nice looking artwork, The Black Aria,
done again by French artist Bolek Budzyn. For those of you
who like dealing with lyrics, the band continues to focus on that really interesting
matter, sex, as depicted on the artwork and on Cross The Threshold.
If you just discover the band and you like either the new album or their previous
album, there's no doubt that you will enjoy Fragments as much as the
others, since you're objectivity might not be as biased as mine.