NEGLIGENCE

How many Slovenian heavy metal albums do you have in your collection? What about the collections of your friend, coworkers, acquaintances and the people at which you've shot bottle rockets from a moving vehicle? That's what I thought. Here's your big chance to be the first on your block to own a Slovenian heavy metal album, since "Coordinates of Confusion" from Slovenia's NEGLIGENCE will soon be released on Metal Blade Records.

In case you're concerned about such things as knowledge of musical content prior to purchasing an album, I can state with some degree of confidence that fans of fundamentally-based, modern heavy metal will not only appreciate, but also enjoy "Coordinates of Confusion". Broadening that definition, "Coordinates of Confusion" is an album that meets NEVERMORE's power thrash and ICED EARTH's more traditionally-based approach at the halfway point, but doesn't quite match the compositional depth of the former and stops just short of the latter's dramatics. Chunky, thrash-edged riffs, double-bass propulsion, and a mid-range vocal style that fuses the styles of Warrel Dane (NEVERMORE) and Matt Barlow (ICED EARTH) — as though translated by James Hetfield (METALLICA) — is what you'll hear most often. An older school inspiration does reveal itself on occasion too, as is the case on "Shark Attack" on which shades of TESTAMENT, ANTHRAX, and METALLICA are present in some of the patterns and axe work. NEGLIGENCE knows how to class it up with tasty leads on the title track and go balls-out and up-tempo on, appropriately enough, "Addicted to Aggression", the track most indicative of the ICED EARTH/NEVERMORE mix.

The mode of operation doesn't vary a great deal and a little track blur that results from pattern recycling crops up periodically, but those are the only complaints of any significance you'll hear from this critic. Otherwise, "Coordinates of Confusion" is a big, beefy modern power thrasher that pays tribute to the rudiments of the heavy metal tradition without attempting to travel back in time to do it. It's also a nice change of pace for the Metal Blade roster.