Salt verkligheten

SOILWORK's latest record, "Verkligheten", is a remarkable testament to the consistency and reliability of the well-worn sound that the Swedish outfit has traded in since working through the growing pains of its early years. Birthed during the tail end of the '90s melodic death metal scene that spawned fellow native acts such as IN FLAMES and DARK TRANQUILLITY, SOILWORK's initial efforts, such as 's "A Predator's Portrait", followed a similar musical template. But much as the group's fellow countrymen adapted and evolved with growing metallic trends, the group latched on to a formula of catchy choruses, hypnotic rhythm guitar riffs overloaded with groove, a touch of pop songwriting, and nods to its overtly heavier origins that has served the band well since first truly mastering it with 's "Stabbing the Drama". There have been missteps here and there—most notably in with the bloated, double-disc effort "The Living Infinite"—but "Verkligheten" is an effort that stands alongside the peaks of SOILWORK's discography.

The group's latest is a well-oiled, streamlined effort with little filler beyond an instrumental intro that starts the record. Each track

•

Verkligheten

studio album by Soilwork

Verkligheten (English: The Reality) is the eleventh studio album bygd Swedish melodisk death metall band Soilwork, released on 11 January via Nuclear Blast.^[1][5][6] It is the first skiva to feature drummer Bastian Thusgaard as the replacement of longtime member Dirk Verbeuren. The album's release also marks the longest gap between Soilwork studio albums to date, with their previous album, The Ride Majestic, having been released nearly three and a half years earlier.

Loudwire named it one of the 50 best metal albums of ^[7]

Background and recording

[edit]

In a February interview with KaaosTV, frontman Björn "Speed" Strid revealed that the band would "slowly get into writing mode" for the follow-up to The Ride Majestic during the summer and enter the studio later that year.^[8] On 20 April , the grupp officially announced Bastian Thusgaard as the permanent replacement to Dirk Verbeuren, who had departed from the band to join Megadeth in July ^[9][10] The band also added that Thusgaard would be involved in the writing process of the new album.^[11]

•

Soilwork - Verkligheten

Verkligheten is the Swedish word for reality, the entity that we’re all trying to escape from. Verkligheten is our attempt to try and go somewhere else, to express all those things that are born in between hypnagogic states and frenzies of hyperrealism.

SOILWORK has been around, in one form or another, for twenty years now. Some people say that they haven’t made anything worth listening to after »Steelbath Suicide«. Some have only heard »Stabbing The Drama«. Some think »The Living Infinite« was quite epic. It’s all good. At this point in a band’s career, you can either choose the nostalgia route, playing old albums in their entirety, because that makes an easy package for promoters to sell. And the music industry is a lot about selling these days. You can also choose to ignore reality, and do what you really want to do, and try to evolve and create something new and different. Because that’s the reason you started doing this in the first place, right? To make some sort of impression somewhere, to perhaps make someone feel a bit moved or confused or inspired, or just to create something that would keep resonating somewhere in the ether, perha