Deliver the Galaxy - Bury Your Gods

Angry Metal Guy 40

Written by: Nameless_N00b_85

It turns out space really is the final frontier. While topics like the nothingness of death, religion, and romantic predilections of the cadaverific kind will always be reliable tropes, space has long revealed itself to be the most tonally diverse of the metal fixations, with music to celebrate its infinite beauties as much as its unknowable (and very knowable) horrors. German melodeath outfit Deliver the Galaxy is poised to drop their third offering, Bury Your Gods, to expound on the “exciting idea that humanity is not alone in the universe.” By the time all is finished, will we have set our phasers for fun, or will we be nuking them from orbit?

After an over-the-top cinematic intro, the band comes out swinging with the title track. Featuring chunky and funky grooves, a healthy dose of Hypocrisy atmosphere, and a bombastic, amphitheater-friendly mix, it’s clear that the band dreams of big things. Choruses are catchy, and tones shift between the weight of black holes collapsing and the gentle colors of passing nebulae. “Unsterblich” is a real highlight, wringing an impressive amount of melancholy from its bridge, and a constant barrage of pit-inciting chugs turning into another earworm of a chorus. The entire package is sleek, immediate, accessible, and reliable.

However, that reliability quickly turns to banality, and a mere handful of songs in, the cracks begin to show. Deliver the Galaxy’s approach to catchiness isn’t rooted in clever vocal phrasing or compositionally clever hooks, but in rote repetition, where each verse seems to serve to get to the chorus as quickly as possible. The choruses themselves also rely on the literal song title being played in a loop. “Get Down” is a particularly egregious offender, repeating the phrase 31 times in its sub-three-minute run time (yes, really) while tacked on to music with a cheesy bop that We Butter the Bread With Butter had the sense to leave on the cutting room floor. The lyrical obnoxiousness is unfortunate, as vocalist Matthias has genuine flair, delivering his lines with a feral sense of conviction and an admirable amount of enunciation, but in the long run, these skills only betray the basic nature of the material.

The compositions themselves fare no better, as the few attempts at experimentation are ghastly. “Shadows” makes a shameless attempt at your local radio rock station with mediocre cleans and a big build-up let down by the even more mediocre chorus. The strange decision is made to end the album with a meandering piano outro, meant to serve as a cathartic release to an album that never earned it. But the biggest offenders are the solos–each is positioned exactly where you’d expect them to be, and each of which bores, stalls, and goes absolutely nowhere. Not every melodeath band needs to bring Scar Symmetry levels of shred, but when your leads are objectively outperforming your solos in both technical heft and emotional resonance, something has gone terribly wrong in the songwriting department.

Still, this album will undoubtedly find an audience, and they’re called “normies”—people who enjoy huge shows where they’re commanded to “let me hear you” or “let me see those hands.” Aesthetically, I like what the band is peddling here, and the enthusiasm with which they deliver the material is palpable. But mediocre songwriting will drag down even the nicest sounding of projects, and this album is high on melody and low on death. A commitment to overly formulaic song structures and a pop radio approach to choruses reduce the listening experience to empty calories for the ears or a space suit with low oxygen in the tank. Hopefully on the next outing the band Deliver the Goods—I’m certainly rooting for them to do so.



Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: WAV | Format Reviewed: WAVY
Label: Massacre Records
Websites: deliverthegalaxy.com | facebook.com/deliverthegalaxy
Releases Worldwide: August 30, 2024

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